In which I continue the process of spotlighting the 20 songs of Rich Mullins that I think are the most enduring, the most memorable, the “desert island” collection I would hand to someone who was hearing his music for the first time. (But not without a long list of honorable mentions.)

Part 2 of our countdown continues to showcase that versatility across my hand-picked selection of tunes. Part 1 already included a number of favorites, but I’ve kept what I feel are some of the very best for second.

10. The Just Shall Live

I never see people talk about this deep cut from The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume 2. It showed up on one compilation, but it never shows up on tribute projects. I haven’t seen anyone blow the dust off of it and give it their own spin. But I can’t be the only one who thinks this is a seriously underrated gem in Rich’s catalogue. It’s everything I require of a great gospel song: muscular lyrics, white-boy-got-soul vocals, rock-solid piano and percussion backbone, a giant choir, and lotsa lotsa B-3 Hammond. I mean… any questions?

9. Peace (A Communion Blessing From St. Joseph’s Square)

This is the Communion centerpiece from A Ragamuffin Band. I’ve always had a very vivid story in my mind when I hear this song: I imagine two friends who have been bitterly separated, one of whom desperately longs to reconnect while the other wears the mask of a stranger. But really, I think it’s the heart’s cry of any Christian longing to touch people who seem unreachable. We have the body and the blood. We have, in the words of Peter, which Rich wrote on in this reflection, the words of life. Why will they not come? We can’t answer that question, but the invitation stands.

(Not only is this a beautiful lyric, it’s a strikingly beautiful piece of music. In my opinion, one of the loveliest piano lines Rich ever came up with.)

8. I Will Sing

Rich said he never listened to his own projects, but on reflection there were two that he would pick out as favorites. One was A Ragamuffin Band (which I’ve already hyperventilated about in part one). The other was Never Picture Perfect. I concur. If Ragamuffin Band is peak folk Rich, Never Picture Perfect is peak pop Rich. It’s very close to flawless (I count only two certified duds). This song opens it with an a cappella bang worthy of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Yet another one dedicated to the persecuted church.

This one was revived by Caedmon’s Call, along with “Hope to Carry On,” which is fun but was very apparently written in the 70s, hence has been regrettably left off this list.

7. Growing Young

This is another overlooked gem from the second volume of Best As I Can Remember It, a beautiful re-working of the Prodigal Son tale.It may not have the “instant classic” status of “Hold Me Jesus,” but it is every bit as potent for me. It’s unabashedly taking a leaf from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, a book Rich loved so much he was known to keep extra copies on hand and give them away to friends and fans. Rich was fascinated by Chesterton’s link between God’s sinlessness and His agelessness. “We have sinned and grown old,” Chesterton writes, but God has the eternal appetite of infancy. So we, too, will grow young when we return to our father’s arms. This is made so poignant by the fact that Rich is clearly thinking of his own younger prodigal self. You can hear the remorse in his voice as he sings, “I’m learning… I’m learning even I can be changed.”

Musically and lyrically, this is perhaps the closest Rich ever came to writing a Keith Green song. The diction is unmistakably Rich, but it also has the open-hearted quality of Keith classics like “Grace By Which I Stand” and “When I Hear the Praises Start.”

6. Bound to Come Some Trouble

This highlight from Never Picture Perfect may lack the ache and the striking edge of “Hard to Get,” but I still find it to be an honest reflection on earthly troubles. I think it rings true for anybody who has dealt with depression, grief, and other things that don’t just run their course and leave you alone, but keep coming back day after day to take one more piece out of your soul. As the bridge says, people say things–“maybe things will get better, maybe it won’t be long… maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow, and it’ll all be gone.” Well, how many of us would be moved to respond, with not a little bitterness, “Maybes just ain’t enough”?

As a musical side note, Reed Arvin wrote some of the most beautiful music you’ll ever hear on a Rich record in the musical bridge that makes this tune flow seamlessly into the next tune on the album, “The Love of God.” They are a prime example of what Rich meant when he reflected that Reed had pulled “things out of my songs that I didn’t know were there” on this project.

5. The Love of God

For some reason, Rich said this was not one of his personal favorites, but it’s been one of mine for a long time. The only reason I don’t rank it higher is that I’ve never quite bought the idea of God’s love as reckless. I sense the Ragamuffin Gospel influence just there, and a part of me wants to pull back just slightly. I have always pictured God’s love as a daunting and even a frightening thing, to be sure, but always a very purposeful thing. Still, there is tremendous pathos in these words and this music, especially if one knows something about the anger and bitterness that warred inside Mullins his whole life long. As with many of his songs, these were not mere words for Rich.

4. Here In America

Perhaps Rich’s most technically flawless pairing of lyrics and music, written at only 20 years old. I was once spontaneously moved to pair this together with Simon & Garfunkel’s “America,” even before I knew what a Paul Simon buff Rich was too. I still think it’s the perfect answer to that song, and it beautifully showcases Rich’s signature sense of place, already strongly present at that young age. This video, as you may be able to tell, was shot on location… in Ireland, cum obligatory tacked-on shot of the Statue of Liberty at the end.

3. Sometimes By Step

Two of my earliest worship memories are “Awesome God” and “Step By Step.” They were probably already a little bit outdated at the Baptist church where I attended girls’ Bible study, but they always went over well, and they were burned into Memorex along with countless hymns and gospel songs I inhaled at that young age. It wasn’t until later that I learned Rich hadn’t written the chorus. I can believe his story that he dreamed up verses so he could share the songwriting credit (he’s only human), but I also can’t deny that those are some verses. The first verse conjures up images of farmers, people of the earth, people who rise up early to milk the cows and seek the Lord. It also highlights Rich’s lifelong writer’s fascination with skies–elaborated on even more eloquently in this astonishing bit of prose. The second verse then turns to Abraham, echoing the lonely hearts of all those who walk as strangers and misfits in a strange land.

It may not be the most polished, but by far the most moving performance of this song I’ve found is the ragamuffin band’s rendition in the Live From Studio B concert. The monologue preceding it is classic Rich–a little sentimental, a little broken, strangely profound, and deeply affecting.

2. Calling Out Your Name

Oh, for the days when a song like this could be a radio hit. It’s like a mini-symphony of all the best things about Rich Mullins–his virtuosic mastery of the hammered dulcimer, his sweeping Americana word-painting, his prophetic vision of how the Lord takes this world by its corners and shakes us free. If there’s a songwriter, mainstream or Christian, who could paint a more vivid picture in song than Rich Mullins, I don’t know who that would be. I love it all the more when I think about the fact that the “pheasant’s wings” phrase wasn’t in the first draft. He had written about quail instead, but his accountant mentioned that they didn’t have quail in Dakota. “Well, what do you have?” asked Rich. “We have pheasant.” “Pheasant. Okay…” Then out comes the fury in a pheasant’s wings.

1. If I Stand

My favorite Rich Mullins song has not always been a constant thing. Sometimes I would tell you my favorite Rich song was whatever I had discovered last. Sometimes I would say it was a three-or-four-or-five-way log-jam and I couldn’t break the tie. I still feel that way sometimes. Maybe I’ll feel that way again tomorrow. But every time I force myself to pick one, just one, this is the one I reach for, just like no matter how many times my favorite Billy Joel song has changed, in the end I will always reach for “Piano Man.” This is it. This is Rich’s “Piano Man.”

There are two performances of this song that I love. One is possibly the first ever public performance of the song with his young co-writer Steve Cudworth–so youthfully awkward and so vital at the same time. But my favorite is this one, recorded five months before his death. I hear that ravaged chain-smoker’s voice, that shortness of breath, and I could weep. I hear a lifetime in that voice: the rejection, the shame, the mental torment, the loneliness, the longing, and despite it all, the whispered hope. It’s enough to break your heart, and enough to make it glad.

For those who are interested, I have written some thoughts on the life and legacy of Christian musician, writer, wise guy and unofficial saint Rich Mullins at The Stream here. As I write this late at night, it was twenty years ago this night that his life abruptly ended in a car crash. Later, it came out that neither he nor his passenger was wearing a seatbelt–a boneheaded thing, but as those who knew him could have told you, it was typical of Rich’s particular brand of boneheadedness. Most of the time, it just made him a little weird and iconoclastic. This time, it cost him his life. A lot of people he touched are pretty sore about that, including me.

Anyway, there was a time when you couldn’t browse a Christian magazine stand or turn on Christian radio without hearing the music of Rich Mullins. With the state of the CCM industry today, his success feels, in hindsight, like a dream–a weird, miraculous dream, the kind you have once and never have again. (More analysis here, for music and music biz nerds only.) Nevertheless, it has been twenty years, and that dream is fading from the collective consciousness of the American church. The worship choruses and songs Mullins wrote (partly in collaboration with friends) were the fabric of a childhood that I’m forced to admit is long gone. I doubt this would shock him. He was a canny guy, and he understood music business. He predicted exactly when his first smash, “Awesome God,” would be a smash. He also predicted when it would fall completely out of use. That’s part of why people love him: He was a no B. S. kind of guy. He knew exactly who he was and never pretended to be anything else.

I remember when I first discovered Rich Mullins. I was in high school, and I was browsing an old shelf filled with books, CDs, dry pens and cobwebs. My dad had a small collection of discs that he’d bought but didn’t have time to listen to anymore. One of them was Songs, by Rich Mullins. At the time, I had a portable SONY CD player. I pulled it out the other day. It needs new batteries. It sits on my desk now as I write. When I slipped that CD into that player, the first notes to come out were Rich’s spin on Bach’s Fugue #2 in C minor (sadly, transposed to a different key). I was hooked.

The next song was “Awesome God,” a chorus which I was already thoroughly sick of at that young age. But the verses had always been fuzzy, and I heard them as if for the first time. Those verses, man. So weird. So cool. I find them even more so when I read that they came out of Rich in a spontaneous moment of improv while taking 16 hours to drag a trailer up a hill for a gig that was 8 hours away. He was bored and tired, his buddy was bored and tired, so what do you do when you’re bored and tired? If you’re Rich Mullins, and hence a little weird, you make like you’re an old black gospel preacher and start riffing. You take the Old and New Testaments and make a gumbo out of them. Out of that, you manage to pluck out an insanely hooky chorus. Then you try to remember it all for 16 hours until you can get to a piano and record a crappy demo. Then you hit stop, look up at your buddy and go, very quietly, “I think it’s gonna be big.”

Next up was “Sometimes By Step,” another song I knew only in part. I knew the chorus, written by Rich’s bosom friend Beaker. I didn’t know the verses Rich said he added so Beaker wouldn’t get to keep all the songwriting credit.

By the time I got to track 4, “Creed,” I was bouncing off the walls. Quite literally. I pushed “Repeat” on the player, picked it up and began to dance around the basement with it, which was a really dumb thing to do. To this day I don’t know how that CD kept playing flawlessly. I’m so glad it did.

I’ve discovered much more of Rich’s music since then. I went on to discover the music collected on Songs 2, which I think I might even love more than Songs. But I wouldn’t be without either of them, nor would I be without all the deep cuts that didn’t make it. (I think I could do without most of those first two records he made in the 80s though. Really. I’m good.)

I’m not here to claim that Rich Mullins was the greatest songwriter of his generation. In particular, when it came to writing tuneful melodies to match his lyrics, I will be the first to admit he had contemporaries, Christian and mainstream, who surpassed him. I also realize that even his good albums had their share of cheese filling. There’s at least one or two duds on all of them (except maybe A Liturgy, A Legacy, & A Ragamuffin Band, on which more anon).

Greatest lyricist though? I could make that case. I will put Rich’s best lyrics up against the best of Paul Simon, Billy Joel or Bob Dylan any day, because yeah, they’re that good. Rich was a breed of songwriter you don’t see much of anymore. He was the kind of writer whose work was just as informed by the literature he read and the cinema he watched as it was by the songs he listened to–if not more so. (Though he studied Simon, Dylan, The Beatles, and others.) To write well, you must first read well, and Rich read. He read in the Jeep, he read on the bus, he read backstage, he read morning, noon and night. He annotated his favorite books for his friends and told them to give away any duplicate copies to make him feel better (if only he knew). He read theology, history, American lit, classic lit, children’s lit, memoir, biography. He was one literate dude. And that, more than anything, is what comes through in the songs he wrote, and why I think his best ones still hold up (besides having some really kickin’ production–here’s looking at you, Reed Arvin).

So, if you happen to run across this blog, and you’re a fan, this little countdown I’m going to do will be a blast. If you’re not, but you’re curious, the very first place I would point you is the Countdown Magazine tribute on YouTube. It’s about two hours of pure Rich music and speaking. If you want to get to know the guy, just throw that on and let it soak in. But, maybe that’s not feasible for you. If so, you’re in the right spot, because I’m here to give you a guided tour which can be absorbed in bite-sized pieces. I can’t honestly tell you if his stuff is going to be your jam. Andrew Peterson put it well when he said that Rich’s music resonates on a very specific frequency, and some people will fall madly in love with it while others just don’t get it. But either way, I don’t see how you couldn’t respect it.

Here goes with part 1. Part 2 to follow. The numbering will be fairly loose, and there’s not going to be too much variation in the quality between parts 1 and 2. I said Rich wrote some fluff, but he sustained an impressively high non-fluff to fluff ratio considering he put out an album every year. So this was a little agonizing, but I had a few different criteria for picking these 20. The main ones were contentfulness, complete package memorability, and plain old personal favorites.

Naturally, my cup runneth over with Honorable Mentions that just missed the cut, even though individual aspects of them might surpass some of the tunes on this list. I’m thinking of tunes like “Eli’s Song,” “I’ll Carry On,” (which I wrote a whole half-post about here) “Wounds of Love,” “Cry the Name,” “The Color Green,” each one a polished gem of a lyric and a beautiful piece of music, but as songs, they fade a little bit in memory. (You really should watch the video for “Color Green” though. No, I mean really. It’s like the 3-minute cinematic love child of Ingmar Bergman and John Ford. So you just go ahead and do that, and I’ll wait. [Waits.])

20. Boy Like Me/Man Like You

We’ll start off with something easy, like the Incarnation. Rich puts us in the shoes of his younger self, when he was too young to know they didn’t have water hoses and winter snow in ancient Palestine. Did little girls giggle when he walked past? Did they now? I wonder.

19. Screen Door

As Rich told the story, he picked up this guy on the side of the road and began regretting it almost instantly. The dude smelled. A lot. Then he started smoking. Finally, Rich pulled over and let him out. “I think I lied and said I had to get off at that place anyway, then snuck around and got back on the highway after he was gone.” So then he got a guilty feeling about not walking the Christian talk and decided to write this tune “as penance.” We all make mistakes, but we usually don’t turn them into songs as insanely catchy as this one. Oh yes, in case you’re wondering, that is the cup beat, and yeah, Rich did it first. It’s Christian music’s little open secret. You’re welcome, Anna Kendrick.

18. Creed

If I could put just one album in your hands that says “This is Rich Mullins,” I would give you A Liturgy, A Legacy & A Ragamuffin Band. This is Christian music’s Sergeant Pepper, its Pet Sounds, its Bridge Over Troubled Water. This is a record’s record. With tracks that were recorded live and enriched with Reed Arvin’s string arrangements in post, it’s an American history lesson and a church history lesson at the same time. The songs flow into each other with liturgical purpose. Do yourself a favor: Brew some coffee, sit down with this album, then close your eyes and remember the days when artists and producers could dream big.

The song “Creed” is one of the centerpieces of the project. And boy, am I glad Steve Taylor decided to grab a camera and chase Rich Mullins around the world with it, so we could get the music video I’m about to share. Maybe you’re not a Christian, or even a particularly spiritual kind of guy. Maybe you believe we get one really good run at this thing called life, and that’s the best we can hope for. But I don’t see how you can watch Rich Mullins singing the Apostles’ Creed by a lake on a morning so crisp you can see his breath, singing it while he makes the hammered dulcimer dance under his fingers, while children gather one by one to watch the magic happen, and not feel something. I don’t see how you can hear him sing “I did not make it, no it is making me. It is the very truth of God, not the invention of any man. I believe it,” and not believe that he believes it, even if you don’t believe it. And I think that’s all he would have asked.

(Music starts at 2:18. You *could* skip the intro, but I don’t recommend it.)

17. While the Nations Rage

I’m not sure Rich Mullins ever met a president that he liked. He liked to say they were sent by God to punish voters. He was one of those grumpy hippy types who were still kvetching about Richard Nixon in the 90s (I love those guys). Anyway, he would sometimes dedicate this song to whoever happened to be president at the time. Very subtle. Still, this is a kickin’ tune about the persecuted church. I especially like the use of Pilate’s phrase “Behold the man” to refer to the risen Jesus instead of Jesus being led away for crucifixion.

16. My Deliverer

When Rich died, this song was the last ace up his sleeve. His friends pulled out all the stops on giving it the full-orchestra production after his death, and it became a Christmas standard pretty much instantly. I am… not a fan of the fully produced version. It’s a lovely orchestration. A lovely orchestration that I really, really wish Rich himself could have sung to. But it was not to be. So instead we have to be content with this demo, which already has “instant classic” written all over it. If you listen closely to a lot of his songs, one thing that becomes clear is that Rich Mullins loved land. Most of his songs evoke the land of America. Here, he evokes the land of Africa: the Kenyan Heights, the water pouring from Lake Sangra’s broken heart along the banks of the Nile River. All the while, the melody pulses with urgent expectation: Something is coming. Someone is coming.

15. Let Mercy Lead

Written, as several of these are, with Beaker. Rich never married, but he took a keen interest in children, and this song was dedicated to Beaker’s son, Aidan. I give Rich a hard time for his melodies, but this stands out as a surprisingly tuneful one. Additional poignancy is lent to it by a letter Rich received from a couple who named their own son Aidan, only for him to die in infancy. These words were written on his casket. As I look in the comments on this video, I see still others with sons named Aidan after this song. One comes as a particular gut punch: A boy of twelve who committed suicide in 2014. Oh Lord, we do pray for mercy.

14. Hold Me Jesus

Ugh, not another sappy song about asking Jesus to hold us. And from a guy too. Pass. That was my first thought when I saw this one on Songs all those years ago. I always skipped it, just like I always skipped “Verge of a Miracle.” I didn’t get it.

I get it now. Because I’ve seen how a father holds a son, and how a brother holds a brother. I’ve seen how crying boys bury their faces in great shoulders, their own shoulders heaving. And I understand how a man could wake up in the night with a heat in his soul, burning hot enough to leave blisters. I understand how, as Rich describes in this introduction, he might want to take a walk in a strange country and be tempted. Because even if you’re not going to sin, it’s nice to be tempted.

Thank God for friends who won’t snore while we are being tempted. And for Salvation Army bands. And for strong arms to hold broken men.

13. Elijah

Rich once wrote, “In my mid to late twenties I had some romantic, highly exaggerated notions about an early death – taking off at 33 – joining the company of Mozart, Foster, Jesus and other immortals who checked out in their early thirties. But this was a party I didn’t get an invitation to – a gang I didn’t belong in (me not being a genius and all). So, in Chicago I had my own party – celebrating the fun of being alive as opposed to the mystique of having an untimely death.”

Reading between the lines, one can surmise what Rich has confirmed elsewhere–that his 20s were very disturbed years indeed. We’re lucky that he never did check out as planned. Of course, the words he wrote at 40 are sadly ironic given how he actually did go out. It was a grim and ghoulish chariot of fire, all right.

But then Rich also wrote this: “I don’t know if God wept at Moses’ funeral. I don’t know if He cried when He killed the first of His creatures to take its skins to clothe this man’s earliest ancestors. I don’t know who will bury me — But I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering, I go back to these places where God met me and I meet him again and I lay my head on His breast, and he shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of His breath, the power of His presence.”

12. Sing Your Praise to the Lord

This song is what happens when you try to get a smart-alecky young guy to practice Bach the way it should be practiced, and he decides he doesn’t feel like it. But because he’s a Christian smart-alecky young guy, a Christian song is the result.

People first heard this song through the voice of Amy Grant, but Rich didn’t mince words about his opinion of her cover, because he knew what nobody else knew until 1996–a whole middle section was cut for time. Also, somebody had helpfully looked at the phrase “madding crowd” and tweaked it to “madd’ning,” a change which must have irritated Rich to no end.

So, it no doubt gave him a certain slightly wicked pleasure when he finally did his own song justice ten years later–a bit rougher and wilder than the way the Christian music world first heard it (or the way it’s anemically, pathetically performed today–sad!) He once said that since he found his singing voice slightly less weird than his speaking voice, he figured he might as well follow that most reiterated command in the Bible.

11. First Family

Rich’s childhood was marked by an odd mix of family stability and family pain. His mother was a saint, and his father was a hard man of the earth. Rich couldn’t farm if his life depended on it. Maybe his life didn’t depend on it. But it seemed, often, as though his father’s love did.

This song is the achingly beautiful sound of a young man who has grown old enough to realize that, in his words, “if you can’t be proud of where you came from, you ain’t got no pride.” It’s made sweeter by the knowledge that a series of brushes with mortality led Rich’s father to initiate some reconciliation before he finally passed on. It encourages all who hear it to find their own first families, their own pride.

In which we discuss the inter-locking timelines, emotional investment, casting, Nolan worship, Christian humanism, and the awesomeness that is the name Hoyte van Hoytema.

Me: So, how much did it affect your ability to appreciate the film that he did what he did with the three timelines?

LS: Well, I didn’t really understand the three timelines at all until it was explained to me after the movie. Basically, I saw the labels saying the times, but I had no idea what was going on. But afterwards, when I understood it, I thought that it was pretty cool. It was a cool idea.

Me: So did it leave you… did it kind of keep you distant from the film that you couldn’t understand what was going on?

LS: Slightly. But also I think part of the reason I didn’t get quite so emotionally whammed was because the whole thing was very sad. And usually, I’m more emotional about movies that are sad, but also funny, so that my emotions are going up and down and up and down, and it sort of wears me out, and then I get really emotional. But I sort of felt… it was a little easier to not be emotional here, even though it was a very intense film, because you were feeling so much of, like, one emotion.

Me: I think that’s a valid criticism, and I… was expecting it to be more inspiring. It is inspiring, but I was expecting a little bit more inspirational oomph, from the trailer, because I know the story of Dunkirk. I’ve known it since I was a little kid, and I know how heart-lifting it is. And we get the one really big heart-lifting moment, and Branagh is walking along, he’s calling out to the civilians like, “Where are you from, where are you from?” And that’s just like, awwww…

LS: Awwww!

Me: You just love that, I wanted a little more of that! But it’s like almost immediately, we turn right back around, and we plunge back into the harrowing journey of the soldiers that we’re following. It’s like right up to the end, there’s something, there’s always some new terror that they have to face. There’s always the reminder of this other person who didn’t make it, or this person who died, or this or that tragedy.

LS: And I think that in one way, yes, that was incredibly realistic. But I think also, because there is a lot of inspiration that comes out of war stories, that they should have balanced them just a little bit more. And yeah, there’s a lot of terror, and people dying everywhere, and people who didn’t make it, but there are also the people who did make it, and their stories, and the happiness they found in the end.

Me: …Maybe one of the most moving moments is when the blind man just feels the face of the boy. And the boy, they deliberately picked someone who was about 18 years old….

LS: He looked like it, yeah.

Me: Yeah, because that is kind of about how old the soldiers would have been. And typically in these things, actors are cast down in age. So typically, you would have like a 28-year-old actor playing a young British soldier. But Nolan was like, “No, I really want to find an authentically young guy that nobody’s gonna recognize, so he can be just the face of British youth.” And I mentioned this in the theater, but I’ll say it again here, I loved the way that the aftermath of that moment with the blind man was handled… because you know, Harry Jerkface Styles, of course…

LS: Nothing against him as a person in real life, but yeah.

Me: Yes, apologies, I just don’t know, I forget what his character is named, because nobody has names in this movie, but I’m just calling him the Harry Styles guy. So, apologies.

LS: Sorry Harry, I actually love you!!

Me: But he’s like, “Oh, that old bloke wouldn’t even look us in the eye…”

LS: The other guy could have gotten mad and been like, “Oh you’re so nasty, you don’t even know what’s going on, blah-blah-blah-blah!”

Me: Right, and the first time I saw it, I thought oh, is the other guy gonna say, “He’s blind!” or something in an indignant voice? But he doesn’t say anything. He just kind of slumps against the seat and says absolutely nothing, and then the ticking stops. Did you notice? Just at that moment.

LS: Yeah. The ticking stopped a few times in the movie.

Me: But you really feel it in that moment, because there’s absolute silence after all the loudness, as you mentioned… it’s like suddenly, there’s no noise at all, and you really feel the absence of sound… “Oh my gosh, is it over? Is it really over? Wow.” That was quite beautiful. And then, you might have caught that the Styles character is very down in the mouth, because he thinks, “Oh, we’ve let the people down, they’re gonna be spitting at us in the streets, it’s a disaster, it’s a failure, we’ve disgraced England,” etc. And then the guy is knocking on the window and holding up bottles of beer. And so, so far from being spat on in the streets, they’re getting a hero’s welcome. So that was very moving, I think, not that Harry Styles deserved a hero’s welcome.

LS: His character. We’ll just say his character.

Me: Not that Harry Styles’ character deserved a hero’s welcome…

LS: Well, I’m sure there were other soldiers as well who were kind of nasty, so maybe they didn’t deserve it either. But it’s part of the ONE army.

Me: That’s exactly the point, is that they were getting The Army back. So all kinds of men, the good men, the bad men, it was the Army. The Army is like this entity unto itself. It’s just really, really interesting. And of course, I’ve always loved that Winston Churchill speech: “We shall fight them on the beaches… we shall never surrender…” I remember when I was younger than you, I just was so captivated by that. And so to have it be read in the very, very tired, worn voice of a young British soldier, I thought was very compelling, because he’s not reading it in a super bombastic or inspirational way. He’s just reading the paper: “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall never surrender…” and the other guy’s like, “Hmm, what, huh?” because he’s so busy grabbing beer and food, it’s like, “He’s reading one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century. No big deal.”

LS: Well, he didn’t really know it was one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century at the time. [laughing]

Me: I know, but it’s just kind of funny, you know?

And the last image of the burning Spitfire…

LS: You know, I thought the last image was all the helmets. Was the helmets before the burning Spitfire?

Me: That was before the burning Spitfire. Another really good image.

LS: Which was also kind of sad, because it’s like “All the dead soldiers!”

Me: Sad, again, to be reminded of the cost. But the burning Spitfire is a perfect note to end on, because it symbolizes the sort of glorious ruin…

LS: Right, yeah. Another good paradoxical phrase.

Me: Exactly. The epic, the beautiful disaster of this retreat. And the spirit of England is the spirit of the Spitfire pilots, is the spirit of the Little Ships. And so in the end, that kind of encapsulates everything that we’ve been saying about how it’s very deeply conscious of the cost of war, the tragedy of war, but also of what can be salvaged from war, and the undying brightness of the human spirit.

Now, one curious thing, maybe I’ll close here… Christopher Nolan’s not a Christian. He’s a materialist. He doesn’t believe in the existence of the soul, or the mind or anything like that.

LS: Well, I would say even non-Christians can appreciate the beauty of a good story of courage, you know?

Me: Well, exactly, and that’s what I find interesting, because he portrays this very compelling story of the human spirit. But he views it from [sic] a humanist lens, so it’s just about the triumph of the human spirit. And so you don’t even see men praying at all, or singing, or anything like that…

LS: Which is fine, I get a little tired of singing in movies. It’s only ruined with me if someone starts singing.

Me: Well yeah, that can definitely be true. But there’s a different scene which I’ll show you from a movie you haven’t seen called Atonement where the main character gets caught at Dunkirk. And the movie isn’t really about Dunkirk, but there’s about a 5-minute scene, and it just sort of pans around and shows you what the beach is like. It’s completely different from Nolan. And one of the little scenes it sort of drops in on as it’s walking around is a group of soldiers standing around singing a hymn. Because everyone is just sort of killing time, because the lines are all backed up, all the way up inland. And it’s a really stirring, quick moment. It’s not really dwelt on, they move past it, but you sort of see that little spark of Christendom in the middle of these circumstances. And so Nolan’s vision of Dunkirk is sort of wiped clean of any of that.

Now, there was something called the Miracle of Dunkirk, which was when George VI called the nation to prayer, and this storm suddenly rose up, and it ruined the Germans’ ability to pick them off in the air and the sea. But then there was this great calm for the little ships to come in. So I don’t think they could have put that in the movie, because it’s so focused on the beach that it really would have taken you out of the situation… Meanwhile, back at the ranch, here’s George VI preparing to make a call to prayer. Wait, what?? So I understand why they did not have that in there, so I’m definitely not imputing that to some hidden secularist agenda or whatever-whatever. I do just find it a little bit interesting, whenever I see crisis movies, whether it be a war film or a disaster film, that shows a lot of people in imminent peril, when you never see any mention of God or prayer or that sort of thing.

LS: Well, if you think about it, Christians are kind of in the minority. So it makes more sense in a way that it would be like… if we’re talking about the masses, large groups of people in a terrible situation, there are technically not very many people in those groups who would be saying “Hey guys, let’s pray!” Most people would be like, “We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die…”

Me: Yeah, well, obviously it wouldn’t work for every scene. But there’s definitely more of a minority now than there would have been at the time. I mean, the brief moment in the different scene, where the men are singing a hymn, feels very authentic.

LS: Right, well that movie, it sounds like it’s a Christian movie anyway. I mean it’s called Atonement…

Me: It’s not.

LS: Oh!

Me: No, it’s most definitely not a Christian movie. I won’t go into all the details of the plot, but it’s certainly not written from a Christian perspective at all. I don’t even particularly like the movie as a whole, I just really like that scene. But no, I can definitely see a bunch of Christian men bursting into a good British hymn. Not that I think hymn-singing necessarily would have fit the oeuvre…

LS: No. [laughing] No, absolutely not.

Me: It’s really not the kind of movie that Nolan was making. I just thought it’s interesting that was sort of absent. But I agree with you that he is proof positive that even non-Christian filmmakers can craft very stirring pieces of art that for those of us who are Christians… we can admire them, and we can sort of see how they point to a higher reality.

LS: Well, any movie that’s even at all humanist…

Me: Exactly.

LS: …You know, any human being with half an eye can see the beauty in that.

Me: Right, and there are certain Christian circles where I think humanism is used as kind of a dirty word, almost. “Oh, so-and-so is a humanist.” And I’m just like, “I’m a humanist too. What’s wrong with being a humanist?” I think that you can’t be a Christian without being a humanist first, in a sense. That’s like step one, precisely because humans are made in the image of God. So, I sometimes think about Nolan, like “Hmmmm, man wouldn’t it be nice if he became a Christian some day. That would be pretty cool.” Because if you think about it, somebody with that kind of a platform, and that kind of an influence…

LS: And that kind of skill too, just as a director.

Me: Yeah, because he’s fantastically talented. So I just think about these things occasionally, and of course they never happen, but it’s a neat thing to think about. But I just can’t wait to see what he’s gonna do next, because I think this was just stunning. Oh, and I hope he keeps that cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema.

Me: Yeah, there’s actually not a whole lot of his movies that I really love. There are some really devoted Nolan fanboys out there who…

LS: Love everything he does, he can do nothing wrong.

Me: Basically. They will get really mad if you raise any criticism. I mean, I saw a group of reviewers [Screen Junkies] who saw Dunkirk, and… after listing all the things that they liked about it, they were like, “Okay. But. We didn’t like everything about it. Hold on, stop the presses! It was a beautiful movie, we just have some criticisms!” And they were almost, like, afraid of what people might say in the comments section, so they were trying to preempt the backlash that they were gonna get.

LS: I’m never afraid of criticizing things.

Me: Me neither. I just completely ignore anything like that. But I’m sure that Nolan himself would not appreciate that, you know, he would not want his fans to act that way.

LS: To raise an altar to him, in a way, like “Oh, I’m so sorry I’m criticizing your movie!”

Me: No, not at all, I think that’s absolutely ridiculous. But, I do think he has a really original creative mind.

LS: Yeah.

Me: Do you think that you want to see Dunkirk again, now that you understand the timelines, do you think you’d appreciate it more on a second viewing?

LS: I think the first viewing is good for me, because if I saw it the second time, some of my love for the movie might wear off a little bit. Because seeing it on the first viewing, it impacts you.

Me: That’s a good point. And you know what happens to the main… if you can call them characters, what happens to them now. But you know, you might see connections and understand how things fit together even better. That’s a great twist… and it’s the sort of thing only Nolan would have tried or come up with. And so I do appreciate his artistry and his originality. I think I’m more of a fan of him now than I was before, and I’m really looking forward to what he does next.

Okay, any closing thoughts?

LS: I’m blanking on any specific thing that could be labeled as a closing thought, but I think it was great.

Me: Would you recommend people see it in theaters?

LS: Yeah, I think it was very effective, because then the loudness is made extra loud. But I would say watch the young kids, maybe don’t take them.

Me: Yeah, I would agree. Even though it’s deliberately PG-13, like we discussed, it does not feel watered down…

LS: Abridged, children’s version.

Me: Not at all. It doesn’t really pull punches on violence, even though it’s not gory per se. I would agree, and I would say, we did not see it in IMAX 70mm, which everyone is saying is The Way to see it.

LS: It seemed very large still!

Me: Right, and so what I’ve read is that there was some more material on the top and the bottom that was shot, that was cropped out on the size of the screen that we saw. So there’s a little bit of the film that we’ll never get to see.

LS: Well, it would have been cropped out even more if we hadn’t seen it in IMAX.

Me: Yeah, that’s true. But technically, if you had done a commute, you know, 2-2.5 hours away…

LS: That sounds a little extreme.

Me: … to an IMAX 70mm theater, then you could see it The Way Christopher Nolan Intended. So this has provoked some funny comments, like you know, “If you can’t see Dunkirk projected onto the side of the full moon, might as well not see it at all.” “If you can’t see it in Christopher Nolan’s private home theater with him whispering commentary in your ear, don’t bother.”

LS: [giggling]

Me: So there’s a certain point at which it just gets a little ridiculous. And so I would say to readers, even if you don’t have an IMAX 70mm theater, seeing it in some form of IMAX or other is still…

I know. It’s been a while. Okay, it’s been all summer. We missed Wonder-Woman because to be honest Little Sis is a bit more invested in guy superheroes, and we missed Spiderman Homecoming because to be honest I got home and realized I didn’t have a whole lot to say about it. So now, for something completely different… our thoughts on Dunkirk. Her first viewing, my second. She has never seen a Christopher Nolan movie before. All her thoughts are her own. We hope you enjoy.

Me: Ha! Not a bad word. So what did you think of the score, because that’s kind of a polarizing thing, although I think a lot of people believe it worked very effectively.

LS: It was very effective. I was glad they didn’t overdo it. They tried to use a lot of sounds that were similar to… you know, planes and heartbeats even, I heard a little bit in there. They tried to make it very raw, which worked very well.

Me: Did you notice the ticking clock?

LS: Yeah, the ticking clock was a huge theme there, and I liked that.

Me: It’s also a big theme in Interstellar, which we haven’t seen yet, but I think you would really like a lot, and we should rent it some time. Yeah, that’s a favorite of Hans Zimmer’s. He really likes to evoke time, because time is a big deal in Christopher Nolan movies in general.

LS: Time or the lack of it.

Me: Or the lack of it, yeah. I thought it was interesting though that in the big moment when you see the little ships, and the cacophony and din melts away, and it’s just replaced by this beautiful orchestral swell… That’s actually not something that Zimmer wrote. It’s a piece of classical music from the 19th century. I believe it’s called “Nimrod…” It must be kind of iconic for the British somehow. But if you look it up, you’ll be like, “Omigosh! Dunkirk brought me here!”

That worked so well for me. I feel like it was similar to the Chariots of Fire soundtrack in some ways.

LS: Yeah, I’m afraid I wasn’t listening very closely to it, but I think I do know what you mean.

Me: One thing that people said is it was the perfect soundtrack for the movie, but it’s not the sort of soundtrack you would want to rush out and buy, because when it’s divorced from the visuals…

LS: It’s just music, it’s just sound.

Me: It’s just not as effective. Sound, yeah, like sound effects. It’s like sound design.

So one thing that is really sharply dividing people is the lack of characterization. And so I was interested in what you thought of the fact that we don’t really get to know any of the characters very deeply.

LS: Right, well since then I have thought that they could…without upsetting the theme of the movie, they could have done just a tiny bit of backstory. And I understand, if they had put a whole bunch of backstory, it would have totally changed the movie, and we’d all have been bored out of our skulls hearing about so-and-so’s girlfriend and so-and-so’s little daughter and so-and-so’s puppy… you know, that would have gotten a little dull. But I think maybe even if we just did it with one person… like just pick a random person and just have… even no dialogue, just a brief flashback or something and then he dies, I mean I don’t know. But just a little tiny bit could have worked, I think. But I think they did a very good job without any backstory as well.

Me: Who would you have liked to know a little bit more about?

LS: You know, the main guy we keep following around, who… it’s like we’re just watching him, we don’t know much about him…but I think just a little bit would connect us to his character even more.

Me: Yeah, I don’t think anyone says his name, but he’s called Tommy in the credits. I really liked the Scottish pilot.

LS: Yeah. [whispers] I thought he was Irish. He sounded kinda Irish.

Me: I thought he was Scottish.

LS: Well, that’s similar, so you know…

Me: I’d have to look it up, but… no, he’s like, “No, I’m going doon.” If you go back and listen to it again, I think it’s Scottish. I realize the accents can be hard to tell apart though, for someone who doesn’t obsess over accents like I do. But I just loved him, I thought he had a great look, a great accent, as we’ve mentioned. And he also, I think, got more screen-time than several of the other characters, because he got to be featured in both the air and the sea storylines.

His name is Jack Lowden and he is Scottish. You’re welcome, ladies.

One thing I liked is that I think character was revealed in small choices, you know, small moments. So when Collins and Farrier are talking to each other in the air…

LS: Okay, I have to break it to you… I don’t know who anyone… I know who very few of the people’s names are, because I was hardly paying attention…

Me: Okay, the two pilots, the two pilots.

LS: Okay, pilots, right.

Me: When the two pilots are talking to each other in the air, it’s very minimalist, it’s very economical…

LS: Saving their breath, basically.

Me: Right, so it’s like, “Okay, let me know what my gauge is, because I can’t read it… okay, how many gallons… all right, understood. 50 gallons, understood,” and he’s making the note and he’s like, “All right, well keep letting me know… I’m fairly confident it’s just the gauge.” And they’re just very stiff-upper-lip, you know? And there’s no real sentimentality, like when they fly over and they realize that the leader is down and you see a Spitfire in the water. Like, “No, that’s the leader.” But there’s no time to be like, “Oh my gosh, he was such a great guy! [flashback to happy days with Fortis Leader].”

LS: Yeah, that’s not the backstory thing I would like at all. I would think that would be totally superfluous.

Me: So that, I think, beautifully captured the sort of stoic grace…

LS: Right. That’s a good phrase.

Me: … of the British soldier. Yeah, thank you! We did get some, I feel like, some emotional connection with the characters on the little ship.

LS: Right, we did, I felt that they sort of developed them just a little bit more.

Me: Mr. Doss Dawson and Peter and George. I was so sad when George died.

LS: I know! And it was kind of an accident… I mean, the shell-shocked pilot did start going and shoving people around, but he didn’t really… he was just kind of trying to get him out of the way, and he fell down some stairs and hit his head, and he’s gone! And one of the saddest lines is when they take some of the soldiers on board, and Peter’s like, “Hey, hey, be careful with him!” “He’s dead, mate.” “Well, be bloody careful with him!” It’s just so sad, that’s all he says! And it’s like, oooh!

Me: And there’s a pause when he’s just kind of processing it, and he’s like, “So be bloody careful.” And that’s just an amazing moment, and then of course later, when… well actually, it’s not a shell-shocked pilot, it’s a shell-shocked navy captain, because if you recall, we see that character in flashback on a boat. And he’s the one who’s calmly telling the guys, “Do you have life-jackets? Okay, well just float here, wait for your next ride, blah-blah-blah.” That’s the same guy we then later see all shell-shocked and shivering. But then, yeah, he’s been asking about George, because he feels bad, and the first time, Peter’s like, “No. No, he’s not okay.” And he almost says it to hurt him.

LS: Well, it’s understandable.

Me: It is understandable.

LS: Because he blames the guy, you know.

Me: But then the second time, he kind of takes pity on him.

LS: Which is really well done, I think.

Me: I think it’s beautifully done.

LS: And then Mr. Dawes Dawson looks over and just kind of nods at him, like “Well done. Nicely said.”

Me: And even though I’m kind of… I’m still ambivalent about that subplot as a whole, because it just feels a little bit contrived to me, that was a very moving moment. And one thing I like about it… because the exact question is, “Will he be okay?” And Peter simply says, “Yeah.” And technically, it’s a lie, because he knows exactly what the guy was asking, and in that sense, it’s not true. But, in a larger sense…

LS: Right.

Me: You know, in the grander scheme of things, will he be okay?

LS: He’s out of this mess now.

Me: Yeah. I think George is gonna be okay.

LS: Right. Awww, that’s really sweet!

Me: Yeah, there are resonances under that line that are just… And when he’s saying, “Oh, this is the only thing I’ve ever done, and I never did anything at school, and I was hoping that maybe my teachers would see it if I got in the local paper…”

LS: Oooooh!

Me: No, staaahp! What are you doing? The feels! Staaahp!

LS: Stop with the onions already!

Me: I know, enough with the onions already.

“I’ll be useful, sir.” <—[bawling]Now, my least favorite scene was the whole thing in the sinking ship where the Harry Styles character…

LS: Seems a little tiring. Starts ganging up on this one random guy, who’s just standing there…

Me: Because he suspects that he’s not English.

LS: He’s French, right?

Me: Right, he’s French. And that’s why he hasn’t talked at all. And so they resent him, because…

LS: Well, the others are actually acting more or less like normal human beings.

Me: Well no, a bunch of them are saying… they want him to go up on deck, and they’re all trying to force him to do this, except for the one character, Tommy, that we’ve been following around. But, the explanation is that he took a British uniform and used it to squirrel his way into British ships that wouldn’t normally have accepted French soldiers.

LS: Well, in a way, he was kind of an intruder, but who can blame the poor guy?

Me: And he’s already saved their lives. So I just thought that scene was contrived and ridiculous, and I also thought it was a little bit funny that they cast Harry Styles in such an unlikable role.

LS: Well, I think it slightly made sense, because they didn’t want this pop star to be, like, the shining hero of the film, because then it would be like that’s the only reason you cast him, to get people to sympathize with that particular character.

Me: He does have a slightly thuggish face, I must say.

LS: I wouldn’t call it thuggish so much as… sort of an unpleasant schoolboy look.

I kind of want to punch that face. For real.

Me: Yeah, exactly, that’s a great way of putting it. So, I’m a little surprised that his management didn’t advise him against it, once they realized what kind of character he was actually gonna play.

Now you said something, you quoted the Lord of the Rings when we were discussing that scene and how the French guy is left behind and dies, but the Harry Styles character, who we really dislike, makes it all the way home, and he’s on that train at the very end getting handed a beer and bread and stuff. And I think the viewer has understandably mixed feelings about the fact that he’s been saved. But what was the quote by Gandalf that you thought of?

LS: That some people who die deserve to live… I don’t know if I’m doing this in the right order, but anyway, some people who die deserve to live, and some people who live deserve death. But that’s not up to you to decide. I’m paraphrasing here, I’m not sure of the exact quote.

Me: Right. “Many that live deserve to die, and some that die deserve to live,” or something like that. And of course, that’s the context where they’re talking about Gollum: Why didn’t Bilbo just kill Gollum, wouldn’t it have been better? And that quote, I think, could be the subtitle for this entire movie, because what Dunkirk really captures well… is the randomness of war.

LS: Right. Unexpectedness.

Me: Yeah, things just… dumb stuff happens, unexpected stuff happens, you don’t have time to think. There are many situations in this movie where nobody has time to be a hero, because everyone is just kind of clawing to survive. Like I was thinking, you know, you feel like you get this brief respite in the scene where everyone’s milling around eating bread and jam, and they’re even smiling…

LS: It’s like, they’re doing something calm, they’re eating bread and jam, so nice! Then all of a sudden, “Oh there’s a torpedo!”

Me: And they’re even smiling for all of five seconds. It’s like, “Oh, maybe … Can we finally just relax and just enjoy some bread and jam? Oh, whoops, nope, now we’re drowning. Again.” And there were women on that ship, women passing out blankets and pouring tea. And you just catch a slight glimpse of the one kind of being thrust aside by the force of the water, and you never see them again, but you know that they must have died. But everyone’s just jam-packed together, and there’s no scene where it’s like, “Oh, I’ll save you!” and a person goes over and helps somebody else, because it’s just…

LS: There’s no time.

Me: It’s just not that kind of situation, which is kind of cold to think about. And sort of bleak, and depressing.

LS: But realistic.

Me: But very realistic, for sure.

A bleak, depressing moment.

So yeah, I did feel like that scene kind of went on and on where they’re prodding and bullying the French soldier, and I couldn’t even quite understand what they were asking him to do.

LS: They were asking him to get off, because the weight of all the people was sinking the ship faster. So they were like “Someone needs to get off to lighten this,” and then one person says, “Well, it’s gonna take more than one person, but I still think you should go off.”

Me: Exactly, right, and “You’ll be volunteering next,” and all that stuff. And somebody made the point that it just really depicted British soldiers badly, and I think I saw her point. But at the same time, I think we do get plenty of examples of heroic British soldiers as well.

Oh, did you notice, one of the few light moments in the whole film, because we were talking about this sort of “every man for himself” feel that you get… When they’ve seen the medical evacuation ship sink, the one with the Red Cross on it at the beginning, it’s this harrowing scene where Kenneth Branagh is looking out and just sees it going down with all the wounded on it. And then he looks down, and he sees the main guy and the French guy and the Harry Styles guy all sort of clinging down there. And he thinks that they jumped off of the ship that just sank, and he’s like “Oh, come on, we’ll find you another ship.” And they all just sort of look at each other, and when he walks away, they dunk themselves to get the tops of their heads wet.

LS: Oh! So were they really just trying to hide, basically?

Me: Yeah, because the deal is, the reason… I mean part of the reason that they pick up that stretcher that the two of them do at the very beginning, and there’s this dramatic thing, you know, where they’re walking across the plank with him, is that they’re kind of hoping that they can sort of get themselves to the front of the line that way, because they’re carrying a wounded man.

LS: And then they can get on the ship, and they can get out.

Me: And they can get on the ship. But then the guy’s like, “No-no-no, back of the line, off you go.” And they’re like, “Oh darn, that didn’t work.” So that’s why they’re sort of hiding down there on the pier. So at least for the two of them, the tops of their heads aren’t even wet, because they haven’t even been in the water yet…

LS: And somehow it wasn’t noticed.

Me: So they figure, you know, people might kind of suspect us, “Your heads are dry, what’s going on here?” And so that’s why they dunk themselves.

LS: Yeah, I didn’t pick up on that.

Me: I didn’t pick up on it the first time either, but the second time, Dad was laughing, and then I realized, “Oh, that’s why they’re doing that!”… and so that’s just a realistic little detail that I like. Or also, the very, very opening shot with all the leaflets fluttering down, and the one, the main young guy just grabs a few of them and stuffs them into his pockets–for toilet paper, obviously, if you think about it.

LS: Oh yeah. I guess that’ll work. I didn’t realize it was for toilet paper.

Me: That was a very common thing. That happened a lot with leaflet drops.

LS: Right. There are so many of these, why let them go to waste? [laughing]

Me: Exactly, you know, it’s not like they would have toilet paper with them. They were in pretty Spartan conditions. And also, I really appreciated the sound design of the gunshots, because just from the first few popping noises in that opening shot, I was like, “Those are real guns.” That wasn’t a sound effect. It’s just like when you’re at the range.

Fionn Whitehead, running away from real gunshots.

LS: It’s not really a bang, like you would expect to be. It’s more like a really, really loud pop.

Me: Right, and it’s weird, but you know it once you’ve heard it, you can’t forget what it’s like. So that’s just one example of the realism and the practical side that Nolan brings to his work.

I still don’t know how they actually destroyed those planes. I saw somewhere that they actually destroyed some German planes, but I’m like, “How did they do that?”

LS: It’s a carefully guarded secret, which they’re not going to tell anybody.

Me: …A stunt pilot parachuted out just in time, who knows? But, I loved the fact that they had real Spitfires, real Messerschmitts, and some of the real Little Ships.

LS: Right, which I’m surprised are still able to float after nearly 80 years. If they’ve been sitting in a museum all this time, I suppose they haven’t gotten a lot of wear and tear.

Me: Well, probably at least some of them are family heirlooms, and they’ve just been passed down and lovingly cared for through the years. And so that was fantastic, although I felt like I should have seen a few more of them. I felt like maybe there should have been more…in the scene where he sees them all coming, there are maybe 50 boats in that shot. On the other hand, maybe that is accurate, because the rescue took place over almost a week, so it wasn’t like they all arrived all at once.

LS: Which would have been too crowded anyway. You know, hundreds and hundreds of boats, there’s not gonna be room for anyone to float, really.

Me: Yeah exactly… the beach was too clean also, I thought.

LS: It was pretty clean.

Me: It’s like, somebody described it as a bad bus stop. Everyone is standing in pretty much neatly ordered lines. There’s a lot of empty stretches of beach.

Where is everybody? And why are we in perfectly straight lines?

LS: Yeah, and it’s kind of funny, if there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers, shouldn’t there be more of them on the beach?

Me: Right, exactly, and in that final, beautiful shot, where the main heroic pilot is gliding along and you get these bird’s-eye views, he’s [partly] gliding along totally empty beach.

LS: Maybe that’s supposed to be at the very end, when everyone’s already off or something.

Me: I don’t think so. It can’t be, because he’s out of fuel. He can’t be gliding for that long, you know? Oh, we should talk just a little bit about how awesome the dogfights were.

LS: They were pretty cool. Everything looked really authentic, because they were real planes. It just looked real.

Me: It really did. That was some of the best…

LS: All the shots shaking your seat, I could feel the vibration in the popcorn bucket, you know?

Me: Yeah… again, I liked the realism, because when a plane would go down, it wasn’t like a huge, dramatic explosion, pieces of wing flying everywhere, exploding fireball…

LS: It would dive neatly into the water.

Me: Right, you would see the tell-tale stream of smoke, and it would just steadily lose altitude and go down into the water, and that was it. And so that was very elaborately planned, so that they could make it as real as possible with IMAX cameras attached to a plane, which is… I mean, they had to be really careful to make sure that would actually work, that the plane wouldn’t crash with the cameras on it. So yeah… loved the realism of that scene.

I could have done with maybe a couple more light moments. I think the best line was the Navy guy and the Army guy are talking together, and the Navy guy says, “The next tide should be in 6 hours,” and the Army guy’s like “I thought the tides were every 3.” “Then it’s a good thing you’re Army and I’m Navy isn’t it?”

Left: James D’Arcy; Right: Kenneth Branagh looking very regal in a hat.

LS: [laughing] Yeah.

Me: That was a beautiful little line, very well delivered by Branagh. So I missed that, I think I could count maybe two or three moments of levity in the whole thing.

LS: What’s the third one?

Me: Yeah, okay, maybe there weren’t even three. And I understand, it’s not a comedy, it’s kind of a war/suspense/horror film.

LS: Oh, speaking of horror, I liked how they didn’t… there wasn’t a whole lot of blood and gore.

Me: That was intentional, yeah.

LS: It wasn’t just like, “Oh, look at all the gruesome wounds we have here,” it was more… there was a lot of drowning. There was a lot of claustrophobia and stuff.

Me: Right. Don’t see this if you’re claustrophobic, for sure. Yeah, I appreciated that, but it definitely didn’t feel watered down [pun unintentional].

LS: Hehe, nope.

Me: I mean, you can still hear people screaming, you can see people drowning, and one of the scariest parts, I think, was at the very end when you see the oil catching on fire in the water. That’s terrifying.

LS: And the people all diving into the water, but they’re underneath the fire.

Me: They’re under fire!

LS: I guess you could swim this way [sideways] and get out from under, but it’s hard to do that.

Me: Like the one guy is trapped between fire and water.

LS: Oh, that was really intense!

Me: It’s absolutely terrifying.

LS: And some people try breaking up into the middle of the fire, which is probably a bad idea, but you know, you do what you have to do.

Me: That scene I feel like, again, is another demonstration of the randomness and the tragedy of war, because on the one hand everyone’s happy (at first) because the main pilot shot that German plane down. So it’s like, “Okay, yay that it can’t shoot at us any more,” but also, “Oh… my… God, the plane has exploded, and now the oil is on fire.” And so there were no doubt soldiers dying in the flames who wouldn’t have died if the pilot hadn’t shot the German plane down.

LS: Oh, right!

Me: So it’s all this tangled mess of war, that one thing happens which leads to another, which leads to another, and maybe this person wouldn’t have died, but maybe this other person would have died. And it’s all this series of tangled events.

The Two Sisters are baaaaaack! We saw Guardians: Volume 2, and we’re here to tell you exactly what we thought about it. In the spirit of Drax, we will hold absolutely nothing back as we answer all your questions (Is it as good as Volume 1? Is it weirder than Volume 1? Who is Peter Quill’s dad anyway? Who’s the best new character, and why is it Baby Groot? Is there anything important parents should know about?) and contemplate related topics, including but not limited to: the gift of mortality, the redemption of scuzz-balls, the power of musical nostalgia, and how Marvel patiently continues to lay the groundwork for the Infinity War finale.

If you’re new to this series, be advised that this is really less of a proper “review” and more of a stream-of-consciousness deep dive, hence insert spoiler warning here. Proceed at your own peril.

Me: So, some people say some of the bloom is off the rose with this sequel because it lacks the freshness of the original. How well did they do trying to keep it as fresh as possible?

Little Sis: Well, I mean, I loved it, and I know you have said that maybe it was a little too weird. But I think that was maybe what they were going for, was that they were trying to make it even zanier than the first one, to try to give it something of its own tone and its own sort of place, if you know what I mean.

Me: It definitely felt like the characters were freer to be themselves, however weird that got.

LS: Yeah, I loved that!

Me: Although I missed Drax’s literalness jokes.

LS: Yeah, that was more of a theme in the first one.

Me: Now the theme was, “Drax says literally the very first thing that pops into his head, about anything. Especially anything having to do with penises, or sex, or his nether regions.”

LS: True.

Me: “You humans have hangups!”

LS: That got a little much.

Me: We’ll, uh, come back to that later, but ANYway… Now, I did see a snarky review calling this “the most expensive group therapy session” ever, because of ALL the scenes where characters sit around discussing their backstories and feelings and stuff.

LS: I don’t know, I didn’t mind that particularly.

Me: You don’t feel like they tried to cram in too many?

LS: Not really. I think that actually, because it was so weird, as you said, and because the humor was often so… I don’t know, juvenile, I think they were maybe trying to put something more serious in there, trying to be like, “No, but really, this isn’t just…”

Me: This isn’t just a bunch of penis jokes.

LS: [giggling] Yes.

Me: Right, well, I think you’re onto something there. But it sort of created this weird, whiplashy kind of effect. “AHAHAHA, PENIS JOKE, oh, serious character moment… HAHA, ANOTHER PENIS JOKE, serious character moment.” And so, it felt like they were trying to, uh, compensate. [ahem] So, I don’t know, but admittedly I did get into some of those character moments. So, of the different character arcs that we saw, which ones did you find the most genuinely compelling and why?

LS: Oh, I think my favorite was Nebula, because she’s been just this baddie throughout the first movie, but once we find out her motive and things, I actually felt really sorry for her, and I actually want to see more of her. I thought she could be really cool.

Me: Well, once you see more why she is the way she is…

LS: You can sympathize.

Me: Yeah, and generally, I’m not a big fan of making villains sympathetic, but since she wasn’t a major villain, I didn’t feel like I knew her all that well as a villain, so I was able to approach her more or less fresh. And her father is going to turn out to be the main villain, Thanos. And somebody made the really good point that whereas before Thanos was just this giant purple monster, purple raisin… now, when we know the kinds of things that he did…

LS: Really, really bad.

Me: This guy is bad, bad news. So that was a smart move also, because it helps to lay down another layer of anticipation for Infinity Wars.

Now, let me see, thinking about what I found most compelling…I liked all the stuff about Peter’s search for his father, I thought was pretty poignant. The theme of fatherlessness and looking for your dad really resonated, I think, in a pretty authentic way, because there are a lot of young guys like Peter. Now, that leads to the character of Yondu, who suddenly grew and became this huge, important, major character, and we’ll go ahead and make this spoilerish, major character death. What did you think about that? I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, because it all seemed to happen so fast.

LS: Yeah, I don’t know. I think I grew to maybe like him a little bit better. I could kind of see how he could be this disreputable father to Peter in an odd way.

Me: Very scruffy. Very biker dude.

LS: But I don’t know, I think his repentance and his starting to help the Guardians was genuine, so I kind of felt that, and I was like, “Okay.” But, as Rocket says, “You smiled, and I started to get a warm feeling, but then it was ruined by those stupid teeth.”

Me: Yes, exactly. Rocket was wonderful in this.

LS: Oh yes, oh yes!

Me: Rocket has always been probably my favorite Guardian, by far.

LS: And he had to put up with being called a puppy, a fox, a trash-panda… he didn’t put up very well, but y’know…

Me: Exactly. And I was partly sold on Yondu because of the way that they drew the parallel to Rocket, that these two are both…

LS: Very unwanted. Well not unwanted, strictly…

Me: They’re damaged. They’re both these very kind of damaged, dysfunctional… you know, if Yondu is like a biker gangster, Rocket is like a biker coon. And they’re just these highly dysfunctional, rough around the edges guys, but they kind of see each other in each other. And so the kind of bond that they had, I thought was very moving, and then just the way it tore Rocket up at the end when he died…

LS: I know!

Me: I was sort of invested in Yondu’s death, because I knew that Rocket was invested in it, which is, I guess more of a testament to how attached I am to Rocket than how I am to Yondu, but maybe that was just me.

Oh, new characters. In particular, BABY GROOT OMIGOSH!!!!!

LS: I know! He’s not gonna be a baby though in Infinity Wars, sigh.

Me: I know.

LS: But he’s so cute! Even just from the very beginning, when he’s trying to plug, I forget what he’s trying to plug together, but he can’t plug it in.

Me: Yes, yes!

LS: And then he’s just dancing around and everyone’s running around like “Get out of the way, get out of the way!” and he just continues to dance.

Me: That opening sequence is classic, everyone’s talking about it for good reason. I knew that he was gonna be a scene-stealer, and he was. I loved all the little things that they did to make him seem like a baby, like the way that he yawns and kind of flops into your arms.

LS: I know. [cooing]

Me: And if he’s upset, or crying, or if somebody’s making fun of him, I just felt SO MAD. Like I am going to…

LS: KILL!

Me: Rip some arms out of some sockets.

LS: Yes, absolutely. Well, he cuts someone’s finger off, so we saw a slightly more violent side of Baby Groot.

Me: Ah, well, yes, but Rocket agreed we weren’t going to discuss that any further.

LS: Good for him, I say!

Me: I’m definitely gonna miss Baby Groot. I admit I didn’t really find Teen Groot as appealing in the end credits scene. He was funny.

LS: He was funny.

Me: [mopey teen voice] “I am Groot.”

LS: That cracked me up.

Me: That did crack me up… what I would be interested to see is if he grows up all the way.

LS: Yeah, will he be like the last one?

Me: Well, he can’t just be identical to Groot.

LS: That would be so boring!

Me: That would be so boring, so that would be an interesting challenge: How could you make an adult, a grownup Baby Groot a different Groot from the old Groot?

LS: …I don’t know, I suppose you could sort of give him his own vibe.

Me: A younger voice…

LS: I guess the original Groot was maybe a little bit serious…

Me: And deeper. [deep voice]: “I am Groot.”

LS: So I guess we could make this more of a fun-loving thing…

Me: It could be a light baritone instead of a bass. And different twig hair.

Now, guys, parents and all, do be aware that there is a rather prolonged scene where some nasty bad-guys are making fun of Baby Groot…

LS: And are throwing other guys out into space and watching them suffocate.

Me: Oh, yes. Let’s get into that, actually.

LS: Because of the swearing, I wouldn’t take a kid to it, really…

Me: And just to be clear, there aren’t any f-bombs… well, there is the one…

LS: Almost!

Me: The one almost f-bomb…

LS: We don’t have f-bombs, but we do have almost everything else.

Me: Exactly. But yeah, we do need to discuss the violence though.

LS: It wasn’t graphic, necessarily, but just…

Me: Yeah, the one scene you were mentioning, I didn’t anticipate.

LS: It was… that’s just no.

Me: Yeah, it was really dark.

LS: I could almost handle gore better than that. Because this is just like, whoa, no.

Me: That, I think, was a huge misstep, and I just want to warn anybody, because the Plugged In review that I read was emphasizing how many people died, and it mentioned “Well, some people died in the vacuum of space,” but it didn’t discuss, “Oh, and we actually see the bad-guys slowly releasing somebody into space and relishing the moment as they asphyxiate,” and what-not. That really left a bad after-taste.

LS: It’s slow, you know!

Me: Right! So, I really want to put this out there for anybody who’s thinking about seeing this. Please bear this in mind.

LS: Young children, no.

Me: Well, even myself, for that matter. I didn’t anticipate it at all, I was blind-sided by it. I think maybe this comes with a certain style of movie reviewing that’s narrowly focused on a particular sort of thing. So I think we need to begin thinking a little more outside the box, and we need to keep in mind that just because something is PG-13… you know, the Academy has the same kind of rigid standards, like, “Oh, okay, how much blood is showing…” but you can do some really disturbing things even within those bounds, and was not pleased that Guardians went there, for sure.

LS: And Plugged In is very good.

Me: They’re very good, and I like Paul [the reviewer] a lot, I’ve worked with him, he’s a very good guy, but I wish he had kind of brought this out.

Oh, and yes, also the scene at the beginning where Yondu is going into this robot brothel…

LS: There’s nothing super-graphic.

Me: No, you don’t “see anything” in that sense.

LS: Except robot babes in bikinis.

Me: But you can tell that yeah, there are robot babes walking around, and you can put together what they’re for, and it’s just a really unnecessary scene…unnecessary and ugly. And that’s another part of what I disliked about certain scenes in this film, especially anything involving the bad-guys or the mutineers. There was just a really ugly aesthetic, and unnecessary bits of gross stuff, like the one bad-guy smashing and eating a spider. It’s just like, “Yech!”

LS: Don’t need that.

Me: Did not need that. It kind of reminds me of what Peter Jackson did with the Orcs in Lord of the Rings. Now, of course the Orcs are supposed to be disgusting, they’re supposed to be horrifying, but he really drew it out and lingered on it in gross ways. So you got quite a bit more of that than I wanted or needed in this movie. And the overall look of the film in many places was, I thought, garish and over-the-top, and again, I keep coming back to the word ugly. But that’s kind of how it felt.

LS: So you mean the planets and things were over-the-top? I was thinking certain scenes were garish or ugly, not condemning the entire look.

Me: Well certain species, like all of the Space Pirates are just horribly ugly.

LS: Are they supposed to be humans, or half-humans, or what?

Me: I think they’re like half-humans or something. They’re humanoid. But they’re hideous, and their scenes go on, and on, and on.

LS: Like all right already.

Me: And I just got ugliness fatigue.

LS: Which is almost more depressing than gore, blood, whatever.

Me: Yeah, it kind of wears on the viewer after a while, especially when it’s on a big screen. And as I told you in the car on the way back, it made me kind of wistful for classic films like Star Wars that had such an elegant, beautiful aesthetic, even when it came to the villains. Think about the design of Darth Vader.

LS: Or even Kylo Ren.

Me: Or even Kylo Ren, think about the design of their suits and what-not. Yeah, they’re scary, but they’re scary in this kind of beautifully designed way.

LS: Yeah, I get what you’re saying.

Me: There’s a grace to it.

[Note: In fairness, previously we did remember that there was some of that needless ugliness in the original SW trilogy as well with Jabba’s palace scene, a scene that, incidentally, we always skip.]

LS: You feel they were handling this movie a little bit too heavily, just kind of clumsily stumbling along.

Me: They went for a particular aesthetic style that I didn’t like… again, that loud, garish style that I dislike. So I think that would be the main thing I really did not like, together with the needless violence and things like that. Also, as you mentioned, quite a bit of juvenile humor.

LS: Yeah, I was like, “All right already!”

Me: Not another potty joke, or whatever.

LS: The first couple times, it was like “Haha,” you know, but then it’s like, “All right, just shut up. You’re acting like a bunch of tweens here. Public school tweens.”

Me: Well, Gamora does point that out at a certain point, like “And this is what we’re discussing??” So they tried to sort of have their cake and eat it too by inserting a character to chide them. But that’s a classic have your cake and eat it too tactic.

Although, Rocket did have plenty of jokes that did land, like his winking…not realizing people could tell he was winking.

LS: I liked the Taser-Face one. That was hilarious! “You know what would be a REALLY cool name? Taser-Face!”

Me: You know, I think they beat that one to death a little bit.

LS: It was really funny though.

Me: It was funny, for the first couple of minutes.

LS: No actually, I thought it was just really funny all along, but anyway…

Me: Now, we haven’t really discussed much at all, we just touched on the fact that this is about Peter’s search for his father, but of course as people know, he does find his father. And his father turns out to be not quite what he was looking for. Not quite.

LS: Hey, let’s go for broke, we already said it was spoilerific.

Me: We already said it was spoilerific, so we’ll go there. It is indeed his father, and his father is a god.

LS: Sort of god.

Me: Sort of god…ish. And of course, this is in the tradition of many mythological stories where feckless, irresponsible, god-like beings go around impregnating mortal females and then having dysfunctional relationships with their offspring… I’ve often thought that comic books are like our modern version of Greek and Roman mythology. So this kind of brings that into the 21st century. But despite the fact that Peter is sort of discovering that he’s a god, essentially.

LS: Semi-god.

Me: Semi-god, but he is immortal, his father makes that clear to him.

LS: Or he was immortal.

Me: Okay, okay, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, he is immortal until he decides to give that up.

LS: Which I admire a lot.

Me: Which you admire, right, and so this leads into the comment you made, which is that this is a very pro-human movie in many ways. Because, we see his dad is monologuing and bloviating and going on and on about how “Soon, there will be only us!” and “These other people are of little consequence!” and blah-blah-blah. And there’s a really good moment, the moment that I think was most emotionally resonant, when Peter… closes his eyes, and he sees his friends, one by one, and he sees these flashbacks of just these moments he’s had with them.

LS: And the great moment when he is on the verge of being won over, we should talk about that.

Me: Oh that’s true. I’m getting ahead of myself here. There are actually two moments. There’s the moment when he really is literally starry-eyed, and then it’s revealed that his dad killed his mom.

LS: And he’s like “What… did you say??”

Me: Right, exactly, and in that moment, we really see that Ego majorly...

LS: Messed up.

Me: Underestimates Peter.

LS: And he’s like, “Oh, I know that sounds bad…” *Bang-bang-bang*… [Peter] just shoots him right up. I was just like, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Me: So then the moment I was thinking about came later, when it seems like everything is lost, and they’re all dying, and Yondu has that line where he says, “I don’t use my head to shoot the arrows, I use my heart.” And that’s when Peter kind of digs down deep, and we have those wonderful, silent flashback moments. I got a little misty-eyed, I’m not gonna lie. That’s when my tear-ducts kicked in a little bit.

LS: It gives him the strength…he is mortal, and that’s his strength and his weakness.

Me: Excellently put. Very well put. And his father is warning him, “If you kill me, you’ll be just like everyone else!” And he says, “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” And so of course that’s playing, in a very light way, but that’s playing with the whole idea that mortality is a gift, that immortality can be a curse, and that to be human is the greatest gift of all.

LS: And earlier, I think Peter says something like, “Well, doesn’t eternity get boring?” He just happens to throw that out there when his father is going on and on about living forever, et cetera.

Me: Yeah, exactly.

So, we should talk about moments when we got teary-eyed. So that flashback moment for sure. Also, the moment when Nebula and Gamora have their pay-off.

LS: I know. Well, actually, I cry when you first find out… when Nebula’s ship has just crashed, and then she jumps on Gamora, but she can’t bring herself to kill her. And then she falls back, and she’s like, “You were the one who always wanted to win, but all I wanted was a sister.” It’s just like, “Awwww!”

Me: Yeah, that was good. That was sad. And I did somehow get emotional at Yondu’s funeral.

LS: Yeah, I think it was maybe like all of the biker gang dudes…

Me: Yeah, the biker gang dudes showing up for him!

LS: Yeah, and they really had kind of an attachment to him, even though he was kind of, y’know…

Me: Kind of a scuzz-ball?

LS: Yeah.

Me: That was a good moment too, and I like the moment where Rocket is looking out, and he’s thinking to himself, “Yeah, and he didn’t push them away…”

LS: Peter looks at him, “Well, of course not.” Awwww!

Me: Awwww, crying again! I did also want to touch on that too, because they were getting at something pretty profound with Rocket’s arc there: this idea that you’re already lonely, so you feel like you understand loneliness, you can live with it because you’ve lived with it all your life. But what you really are afraid of is rejection, and so you don’t want to let anybody close to you, because you’re afraid that if once you did that, maybe you would lose them again. And so your “solution” is to just go through life stiff-arming everybody. And that’s quite a keen insight, I think, into… well, raccoon nature, as case may be. And so, Rocket finally embracing his family by the end of it…

LS: Dysfunctional family.

Me: Yes, his dysfunctional family unit, such as it is… but for me, that was one of the best, most satisfying emotional pay-offs, ‘cuz I love that little racoon guy. I love that little trash-panda. He’s awesome.

LS: Yeah. Totally.

Me: Okay, favorite song from the new soundtrack. Go.

LS: Oh, okay, I liked, and I don’t really know what any of these are called, but I liked the one, “If you don’t love me now, you’re never gonna love me again…”

Me: “The Chain!” Yaaaaaaas! [breaks into the chorus] That was fantastic.

LS: I mean, it did get a little annoying after a little while that they kept pushing in songs for all the scenes.

Me: Every moment must have a song.

LS: But I did kind of like the way they used that one.

Me: I loved all the songs. One of my favorites was the “Bring It On Home” cue where Peter’s dancing with Gamora, and they’re talking about “the unspoken thing…”

LS: And there TOTALLY IS an unspoken thing, there is, there is!

Me: There is an unspoken thing, there is, there is.

LS: And even Gamora admits that, by the end.

Me: We didn’t talk about Mantis, by the way.

LS: I liked her! She was really sweet and sensitive.

Me: I know!

LS: Even though she was a little weird.

Me: She was a little weird, and kind of ugly, as Drax said.

LS: I don’t think she was ugly! I actually don’t.

Me: Well, her antennae were sort of…

LS: But it was part of the… I actually thought she was kind of pretty, in an odd way.

Me: …Yeah, I know, I kind of agree with you there. But she had a really innocent vibe about her, and I loved the moment where she’s sitting with Drax, and Drax is thinking about his daughter, and he says, “She was like you,” and she goes “Ugly?”

LS: “Disgusting,” actually.

Me: “Disgusting,” right, because he’s just been telling that… she’s kind of ugly, and she’s like, “Oh, okay!” because she just takes everything super cheerfully, and he says, “No. Innocent.”

LS: Awwww. I actually missed that line, I didn’t hear it properly. Awwww, that’s a really good line!

Me: It is a good line, it’s one of the best lines in the whole film, I think. And so that was another thing that was nice, was to see her getting rescued out of this terrible situation where she’s essentially…

LS: A slave.

Me: Yeah, Ego’s slave. And she’s just sort of plucked out and gets to join the rest of them.

LS: I felt that all of our new characters, and even Yondu who’s not technically a new character, they kind of got a moment, they all got their own little thing… ’cause she gets to kind of help everyone by putting [Ego] to sleep.

Me: Yeah, exactly. And that’s one thing I appreciate about these big movies that are so crammed with characters, because not every superhero movie does this well. Certainly, some of the X-Men movies… were famously bad and famously over-crowded with characters who just felt like extra, like they didn’t have anything to do. And so I feel like this film, even though it had so many characters, it really made sure that every single one of them had some kind of a moment. And that’s not easy, and I can’t wait to see how they pull it off in Infinity Wars.

LS: That’s gonna be even bigger! I’m actually really excited for it.

Me: Oh, I’m excited too. And they’ve been really smart in taking their time to build up this cinematic universe, because by the time you get to Infinity War, they’re not gonna have to do any introduction, because we’re already gonna feel like we know these characters so well, we’ve kind of grown up with them a little bit, and we already have this knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, their faults, their fears. And they’re just gonna bring that with them, because of all this patient groundwork that’s been laid.

LS: Yeah, and that’s really cool that, as you said, you do know them so well, like all their faults and fears and stuff, because it gives a little bit more depth to it, I think, a little more realism than just, “This is a superhero movie about people who can do cool stuff!” It’s like, no, these are people who can do stuff, real people, even though they’re not real, but anyway…

Me: Right, like Hawkeye says, “I’m just a guy with a bow and arrow. That’s all I am, I’m just a guy.” Now, you do have people like Thor, who’s a god, and y’know, Hulk, who’s a green rage monster…

LS: He’s also human sometimes.

Me: Well, that’s true, technically he is human. That’s a good point. And so now that they’ve brought in Nebula, I’m assuming she’s gonna have a pretty big role in Infinity Wars as well.

LS: Because she’s going after Thanos!

Me: She’s going after Thanos, and Gamora is probably gonna be going after him as well.

And last but not least, I complained a lot about the style and the aesthetic of the film in some ways, but I did really enjoy the way they put together the closing credits sequence.

LS: That was fun!

Me: That was just so much fun.

LS: With all the off-stage stuff with all the actors dancing.

Me: Right, and the way they did it, they kind of made it look like vinyl cover art, with the sort of crinkly-looking photographs of the actors, it made me feel like I was watching some cheesy 60s show or something. And that’s of course very self-consciously retro, but I like that. I like that whole self-consciously retro vibe. And I like what they’ve done with that, combined with the oldies music. It kind of reminds you of the power of music, and the power of music as it relates to memory, that hearing a certain song can be like smelling a certain smell. It takes you back to a place, and it draws you to a person. And these things are so deeply ingrained in us that we don’t even think about it, and then we realize, “Wow, this is such a deep part of me.” And that’s like Peter with his Walkman and music. It’s like all he has of his mother, carried around with him.

LS: Right, and I wanted to say, I know you said there was a certain ugly aesthetic about it. I think that they were trying to go for maybe two aesthetics, because there was also another aesthetic, with the tender moments and the deep moments and the kind of bitter-sweet moments, that was also a really nice aesthetic, an almost beautiful aesthetic, to sort of counter-act the one that was maybe not so good.

Me: I agree with that. Certainly the moment where Peter’s dancing with Gamora is a really tender, kinda hippy-ish moment or something.

LS: Awww, yeah.

Me: So I loved that. And there was one other surprise with the credits which I won’t give away, but you should definitely stay and watch the credits, and pay close attention to what’s going on with, ah, some of the…words. I will just leave it at that. You know what I’m talking about.

LS: Yes, yes. Stay for the whole thing guys.

Me: And as for the Easter eggs, I think they crammed in, what was it, like four Easter eggs?

LS: I don’t know, but they broke them up, so they used them to good effect…

Me: There is a fantastic Stan Lee cameo. He’s the guy in the space helmet…

LS: Oh, oh right, ‘cuz they always have to have a Stan Lee cameo, somewhere or other.

Me: Exactly. So, yes, Stan Lee is definitely in this.

LS: I didn’t pick up that was their Stan Lee cameo, but that was funny!

Me: It was fantastic. Oh yes, and the Sovereigns, who were so forgettable that we literally haven’t mentioned them for the entirety of this review.

LS: Ugh, they’re so unnecessary.

Me: Completely unnecessary, and that was another thing I was gonna say I didn’t like about this, that they had to bring in these villains who serve no other purpose but to conveniently drive the action along when they couldn’t think of anything else.

LS: Yeah, and that was the only really extra thing that they did, because with all their other new characters and things…

Me: They had so much to work with without introducing this random alien race. I hated that.

LS: I guess they were like, “We have to have so much going on, now we have to have even more going on, so let’s throw some video game ships in there!”

Me: Right, and so then, that’s why I was so annoyed that when the one Easter egg revealed they would be back, it’s like, “Seriously, the absolute least interesting part of this entire movie, and you’re bringing it back?”

LS: I think they felt that they had to wrap it up… “Oh, but we didn’t do enough with them, we didn’t give them closure as characters!”

Me: Uh, that’s okay, I didn’t need it.

So, anyway, good movie, but because of some of the reasons we listed, I would definitely not take any non-teens. But it’s a good continuation of the first one. It had some emotional moments that eventually landed. You wonder where it’s all gonna go, because there are so many character moments, but I feel like it did eventually earn most of the emotional pay-offs.

LS: Yeah, I’d agree.

Me: So, pretty weird, but pretty good.

LS: I loved it. I absolutely loved it, even though it was weird, even though it had some dark spots, I loved it, just overall.

Me: All right, well, looking forward to seeing the Guardians strut their stuff in a new adventure.

Once upon a time, I gave you my top five underrated love songs (at the time). Once upon another time, I gave you my top five love songs (at the time). Notice a pattern? Like most “top 5/10/20 things” lists, my list of love songs is a many-splendoured, ever-changing thing. Certainly, I would keep some things, but not all, and others I would now add without a second thought.

Herewith, my top ten love songs. A few ground rules: no breakup songs. No Bryan Adams. No Air Supply. No Richard Marx (Dad, can you forgive me?) No Bette Midler. No Kenny Rogers. And no Lionel Richie. Absolutely no. Decidedly no. Uh-uh. Also, my mom will kill me if I put “Just the Way You Are” on here even though I kinda like that one. (Don’t tell anyone, I prefer we keep this between us.)

All right, now that we’ve got that out of the way, herewith, My Top Ten Love Songs As Of Right Now, c. Midnight on Valentine’s Day, 2017.

10. Thank You, by Keith Urban

I’m seeing for the first time

The stars, the sun and moon

They got nothing on the power

Of this love I give to you

This may not be Keith Urban’s melodically strongest moment, but it’s a vulnerable, heartfelt tribute to the love of his wife Nicole Kidman, who staged the intervention that broke his addiction to cocaine. Perhaps not too much should be made of the repeated references to “thanking God for grace and mercy,” but one shouldn’t make too little of it either.

9. The Border, by Mr. Mister

I can see it all so clearly now

I can hear your voice in a song

And it burns down inside my soul

Takes me down this winding road

We can find our way back home

Like “Thank You,” this is a grown-up love song, in the sense that it deals with things grown-ups deals with. The lyrics allude to some unspoken grief or wedge that has come between the speaker and the beloved. It doesn’t say explicitly that the couple is married, but the tenor of the lyric conveys the sense of a relationship with some years behind it, and roots that run deeply enough for the sadness that hangs over it now to carry real weight. It says “Too many of us have run out of the circle,” a possible allusion to divorce. There’s a question “Can we go on now, from what we have done now?” implying faults and indiscretions on both sides. The speaker doesn’t have answers for his questions, but he knows that the only way to find them is to continue walking “wherever people go who go on together.” And every step taken, every act of love made “gets us closer to home.” And this is where we start.

8. Dancing In the Minefields, by Andrew Peterson

So when I lose my way, find me

And when I loose love’s chains, bind me

At the end of all my faith, to the end of all my days

When I forget my name, remind me

I really see this as a continuation of the last song, or rather, the provision of a Christian context for it. It doesn’t promise that there won’t be more mines, toils or snares on the road homeward. But if God wills that our lovers should escape, he will provide a way. And if not, that’s what the promise is for.

7. She’s Everything, by Brad Paisley

She’s the voice I love to hear

And someday when I’m 90

She’s that wooden rocking chair

I want rocking right beside me

Okay. Enough heavy stuff. This is a perfectly written, perfectly executed love song. I have nothing to add. Slow clap.

6. Faithfully

They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family

Two strangers learn to fall in love again

I get the joy of rediscovering you

Oh girl, you stand by me

I’m forever yours, faithfully

This song is terribly sad to listen to when one knows that its writer, Jonathan Cain, actually did go on to divorce his wife (and wound up one day marrying… Paula White? who, what, huh??). But it remains an undeniable classic. I’ve written more about this song here.

5. Reminiscing, by The Little River Band

Now as the years roll on

Each time we hear our favorite song

The memories come along

Older times we’re missing, spending the hours reminiscing

Do I hear you crying foul, dear reader? “You banished all cheesiness from this list, what pray tell is THIS?” THIS, you impertinent young imp, is a classic. I shall brook no dissent. Away with you.

4. She’s Always a Woman, by Billy Joel

She’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden

Then she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleedin’

But she’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be

Blame it all on yourself, ’cause she’s always a woman to me

The cooler, smarter, sexier, and yes, more romantic counterpart to “Just the Way You Are” (there, happy now?)

3. In My Life, by The Beatles (Lennon)

All these places have their moments

With lovers and friends that went before

I know I’ll often stop and think about them

In my life, I loved you more

I am not a Beatles fan. I own no Beatles vinyl, I am woefully ignorant of Beatles trivia, but blimey if this isn’t one of the finest, most poignant love songs ever written.

2. True Companion, Marc Cohn

So don’t you dare and try to walk away

I’ve got my heart set on our wedding day

I’ve got this vision of a girl in white

Made my decision, and it’s you all right

Nobody can craft a lyric like Marc Cohn. This isn’t just songwriting, it’s poetry. There’s a new thought on every line, and the rhyme scheme is meticulously attended to, with internal rhymes to boot. And the arc is perfectly formed, from the first spark of desire, to the kindling of the flame, to the last flicker, ending as all love songs should, but so few do.

1. I Will Be Here, by Steven Curtis Chapman

I will be here

And you can cry on my shoulder

When the mirror tells us we’re older,

I will hold you

And I will be here to watch you grow in beauty

And tell you all the things you are to me

I will be here

This has been #1 for a while now, and I really don’t see it being shaken from its throne any time soon. Some love songs may be more cleverly or impressively written, but this one is elegant in its plainspoken simplicity. Moreover, while many love songs are contrived in a vacuum with no particular woman in mind, this came from an authentic place. At the time, Steven was thinking about his own parents’ divorce and wanted to assure his wife that they would not follow in those footsteps. They’ve certainly been tested more than many couples. And still, the promise holds.

Many have commented that 2016 was thicker than usual in celebrity deaths. But some of those deaths have felt crueler and more poignant than others. (I for one couldn’t care less whether Prince lived or died. Sue me.) The comparatively young death of Carrie Fisher has come as a particularly sad shock to cap the year off. Tributes from various friends and associates have poured in, all emphasizing her sharp wit, humor, and honesty. It’s struck me that Fisher’s distinct un-sappiness as a person has rendered this outpouring less syrupy than the usual “dead celebrity tributes” fare. She was a complicated personality with lots of hard edges and dark corners, and she spoke about those hard, dark parts of herself with disarming candor.

Some fans are just now learning that Carrie Fisher was married: once only, to rock legend Paul Simon of Simon & Garfunkel fame. Their stormy, whirlwind romance gets extensive treatment in Peter Ames Carlin’s new Simon bio Homeward Bound, from which some pertinent excerpts are provided here. It’s painfully sad reading. Carlin paints a vivid picture of two people who had extraordinary sympatico, yet were so deeply dysfunctional that neither one could handle the other’s pain. They shared a fierce intelligence and a melancholy bent that inevitably drew them together. There are stories of titanic fights between them that would dissolve all of a sudden because they began to laugh helplessly at each other and themselves.

However, there’s no denying that their marriage was spectacularly ill-advised. Fisher’s bipolar disorder and drug abuse weren’t things that could be pushed under the rug. They were an ever-present ball and chain. Coupled with Simon’s own ongoing depression, and topped off by a tragic miscarriage, they inexorably dragged the marriage down to its doom, a mere year later. Interestingly, it was Fisher, not Simon, who made the final decision to cut it short, no doubt believing it was best for both of them.

As is typical with such things, this wasn’t the end of the story. Simon and Fisher maintained an on-again, off-again relationship for a number of years thereafter, before Fisher once again decided to break it off for good.

Musically, some of Simon’s best work came out of this relationship, most famously the song “Graceland.” Fisher is the “she” who “comes back to tell me she’s gone, as if I didn’t know that, as if I didn’t know my own bed.” However, Simon wrote another song about their relationship that slipped through the cracks at the time: the title track for a flop project called Hearts and Bones, which has been revived as something of a cult classic in recent years. While the stature of “Graceland” is undeniable, and the track understandably more ear-catching, “Hearts and Bones” is, for my money, the deeper and more poignant lyric of the two. It traces “the arc of a love affair” between “one and one half wandering Jews” (Fisher was half-Jewish), from marriage to divorce. One might mistakenly think it was written in the wake of their separation, but eerily, it was actually written on the cusp of their marriage.

In hindsight, of course, it wasn’t so difficult for Paul or anyone else to foresee what would happen. (Which raises the unromantic question, “Then why the hell did you do it, idiots?”) But, setting aside the obvious, this lyric is full of some truly gorgeous lines. Here, the speaker looks back (as Paul looks ahead) to their wedding day:

Thinking back to the season before
Looking back through the cracks in the door
Two people were married
The act was outrageous
The bride was contagious
She burned like a bride
These events may have had some effect
On the man with the girl by his side
The arc of a love affair
His hands rolling down her hair
Love like lightning, shaking till it moans
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones

Towards the end, the speaker reflects that though they have “returned to their natural coasts” (Carrie to California, Paul to New York), the bond they made can never be wholly unmade: “You take two bodies and you twirl them into one/Their hearts and their bones/Aw, and they won’t come undone.” As a literate person and an ethnic Jew, Simon almost certainly was harking back to Adam and Eve (“bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh”), as well as Jesus’ words that in marriage, man and woman shall be no more two, but one flesh. It’s interesting to see someone who was the last person to exemplify Christian sexual mores nevertheless recognize this truth with such clarity. Marriage is natural. Divorce is unnatural. This is an incontrovertible fact of life.

I’ve had this song in rotation for a few years. And true to my impulse to play mix-and-match with art in general and music in particular, I’ve often rotated it in tandem with a different song about a different marriage: Andrew Peterson’s “Dancing in the Minefields.” Here, Peterson takes a personal look at his own union with his wife. Their love was pledged with pawn-shop rings, amidst disapproving murmurs that they were “much too young.” Nevertheless, “we said our vows and took the leap.”

But this portrait of young love is not a sugar-coated one, as here the refrain comes in to talk about the “minefields” through which they have danced, the “storms” through which their fragile bark has sailed. “This is harder than we dreamed,” Peterson sings, “but I believe that’s what the promise is for. That’s what the promise is for.” They may not have brought the baggage of mental illness or drug addiction into their marriage, but every relationship is bound to be fraught with its own particular ups and downs. Christians aren’t immune to weakness, sin and insecurity.

Peterson is aware that a lasting marriage is a rare and precious thing: “‘I do’ are the two most famous last words: the beginning of the end.” The ache of this truth is especially sharp when you listen to this song back-to-back with “Hearts and Bones.” So what is the remedy? “To lose your life for another,” writes Peterson, is a very good place to start, or so he’s heard. When two people enter a union with their eyes open, ill-advised though it may be, once the covenant is made, this is all that remains. No doubt, like many a secular couple, Simon and Fisher entered their union with the usual caveats in mind: “If it works out… unless we change our minds… we’ll give it a try… wait and see…” But deep down, is this what they wanted? Is it what they really wanted? Listen again to “Hearts and Bones,” and you’ll hear it: an unmistakable longing for something more.

People often seem terrified by the bridge-burning commitment of marriage, but Peterson and his wife “have nothing left to fear,” because “the Son of man” is their guiding light. He is the eternal witness to their covenant, and he remains their solace and their strength, through all the chances and changes of this moral life. While it is sadly true that Christian marriages have historically not been divorce-proof, they should only fall apart if one or both spouses forgets this truth.

It may seem facile to say that like many a coupling that sprang from rock-and-roll/Hollywood soil, Simon and Fisher’s was doomed to wither and die because it wasn’t rooted in the soil of a Christian marital ethic. Yes, there were many, many factors dooming their marriage. Yes, many non-Christian couples, free of their particular kinds of baggage, have navigated marriage successfully. Yet any couple who takes their vows without grasping what Peterson and his wife have found is still launching their bark without so much as a compass. And, as I have personally witnessed, a couple who does grasp it may yet dance their way through minefields at least as treacherous as those faced by Paul and Carrie, if not more so.

]]>https://yankeegospelgirl.com/2016/12/28/questions-and-answers-hearts-and-bones-and-carrie-fisher/feed/8yankeegospelgirlImage result for "paul simon and carrie fisher" imagesGeorge Bailey and the Embrace Of Homehttps://yankeegospelgirl.com/2016/12/24/george-bailey-and-the-embrace-of-home/
https://yankeegospelgirl.com/2016/12/24/george-bailey-and-the-embrace-of-home/#respondSat, 24 Dec 2016 23:06:33 +0000http://southerngospelyankee.wordpress.com/?p=26133Continue reading George Bailey and the Embrace Of Home]]>This year, one of my all-time favorite films turned 70. It’s a Wonderful Life has rightly earned its place as an American classic and one of Jimmy Stewart’s best roles. It gives the lie to anyone who tries to paint old Hollywood in broad, simplistic strokes, by presenting us with a likable hero who catches one bad break after another and eventually has to be pulled from the brink of suicide.

Over at The Stream, I paid tribute to the film by dusting off a film project I’ve featured here before, which combines the movie with Andrew Peterson’s song “World Traveler.” George’s story has so many layers of meaning, so many resonances, chief among them the resonance of home. In this article, I weave George’s story and the story Andrew tells in his song with some personal reflections of my own. I hope it cheers somebody this Christmas Eve. A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Is Rogue One really the first Star Wars movie to realize it’s about war? Why is Darth Vader suddenly making bad puns? What’s CGI [SPOILERS] doing in here? Can we talk about Jyssio for just a minute? And the 64k question: Did we NEED Rogue One? Welcome to Part 2 of our deep dive! And, as with Part I, SPOILER WARNING. If you have not yet seen the movie, bookmark this and come back when you have!

Me: We have to talk about Darth Vader.

Little Sis: Mhmmm.

Me: Were you happy with the amount of Darth Vader we actually got?

LS: No. Not really. We didn’t get enough. I think if they’d just put a LITTLE more, like maybe one more really good scene, that would have been enough. I wouldn’t have liked it if they had overdone him. But if we had just gotten one more, just a little bit more, come on!

Me: So what would you like Vader to do in the other scene?

LS: Oh, could he kill someone else? Or do a little more force-choking? I love the force-choking.

Me: Oh, one more. Just force-choke one more person, come on!

LS: One more pathetic bad-guy, puh-leeeeeeze!

Me: One more pathetic bad-guy. Yeah, oh man, poor Krennic.

LS: *I* don’t feel sorry for him.

Me: Sorry, but not sorry.

LS: I ain’t sorry, girl.

Me: He is pretty scary in the prologue, I will give him that.

LS: I thought he was gonna be a great villain. And I’m like, eh, not really.

Me: I know, I felt let down. I really thought he was gonna be this fearsome, intimidating guy.

LS: However, however, I think that the way they unceremoniously made him more pathetic, I actually liked that a little bit. Even though I thought he was gonna be bad, it’s kind of a nice surprise. “Heh. You’re not so tough and ruthless now, are you?”

Me: He’s lost in Darth Vader’s shadow, quite literally, from the moment… oh, by the way, that was a really sweet way to introduce Vader, I thought. The first time you see Vader is this giant shadow on the wall, just cast across Krennic looking up.

LS: [clump, clump] [Vader inhale/exhale]

Me: Well, did you notice though, that we actually did get a glimpse of Vader in his bath or something? When the robed figure comes in and says, “My Lord, Krennic is here.” That’s Darth Vader taking a bath.

LS: I didn’t notice that! I literally did not know that, wow!

Me: You didn’t put that together?

LS: No, I guess I wasn’t looking closely. Maybe I was trying to grab some popcorn I dropped or something, I don’t know.

LS: That’s hilarious. If I had seen that, I would probably have been snickering out loud.

Me: Yeah, I know, but boy, once he puts the suit on, he is not messing around. Okay, he did have a line that was super-duper corny, at the end of that scene where he’s force-choking Krennic, he says, “Be careful not to choke on your aspirations,” which is kind of a pun, because…

LS: Haha.

Me: “Aspirations.” Hahaha.

LS: I mean, at the moment I was like, “Oh, haha, that’s kind of funny.” Then later I’m like, “Eh, it wasn’t really that funny. That was kind of a bad pun.”

Me: Darth Vader doesn’t make puns. It’s like, “I came here to force-choke people and make puns. And I just ran out of puns.”

Me: Exactly, exactly. But Star Wars-era Vader, just wreaking… all hell breaking loose, is something we haven’t really seen until now.

LS: Now we know how his wonderful little grandson, where he got those anger management issues.

Me: Yes, yes we do. That was a great scene, because it shifts from, “Save us, save us, help us” to “Okay, just take the plans. Just take the plans and go, because we’re not getting out.”

LS: We are absolutely finished.

Me: We’re toast.

LS: Oh, and this is why we grease our sliding doors.

Me: [laughing helplessly]

LS: You never know when you’re gonna need some good old-fashioned grease on those doors. You don’t let them get stuck or old.

Me: Oh my gosh, that’s so funny.

LS: Really. You need to do that.

Me: [still laughing] Oh man. So funny.

So, I wanted to go back and give a little more love to Mads Mikkelsen as Jyn Erso’s father.

LS: Yeah, I thought he was a really good character, even though we didn’t really see that much of him. I mean, let’s be real, half of what we saw was through green-tinted binoculars. Or his dead body. Or his nearly dead body.

Me: Yeah, but boy, what a scene where the Allied bombs… it’s too late to call them off…

LS: And she’s over his body. That’s SO SAD! And the captain’s like “Come on, come on, we gotta go.” And she’s like, “No, no!” He’s practically dragging her off, it’s just like awwwwwww, that’s heartbreaking!

Me: Awwwww! It’s her daddy!

LS: I know!

Me: Man, yeah, I definitely got a little something in her eye first time I saw that scene in the theater. Yeah, everything about that scene was incredibly well done, just the tragedy and the pathos…

LS: Pouring rain.

Me: Pouring rain.

LS: Lights flashing. It was good.

Me: Even though I still maintain it was a bit of a stretch that the Alliance would be that obsessed with assassinating him. This was another plot point that was irritating me, because it seems like they would have figured out along with him that he’s dispensable. But, who knows, you know, maybe that wasn’t so obvious. And they didn’t know how far along the Death Star was either. In fact, it was so far along that it wouldn’t really have made any difference…

LS: Very true.

Me: In fact, he dies there, and it doesn’t make any difference, it just rolls along without him.

LS: But I think that maybe what this movie is trying to say is that even from the bigger point of view, “Oh that person died, okay, whatever he’s dispensable,” people like Jyn who lost their father will feel that. Those personal scars that are a big part of war, and a sad part… you will lose someone at some point.

Me: Right, that’s a good point. The Empire views him as dispensable.

LS: Because they don’t care.

Me: ‘Cuz they don’t care, they view everyone as dispensable.

LS: Except themselves.

Me: Well, the ones that are higher up on the ladder view the ones lower down on the ladder, on the food chain, as dispensable. And Krennic finds out he himself is very dispensable by the end.

Me: Oh my gosh, he’s so consumed with his own importance, he just craves that recognition. Boy oh boy, it’s harsh, but I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

LS: Nope.

Me: Okay, so we got off on a Krennic tangent, but just to reiterate, I loved Jyn’s father, and I thought that his scenes provided some of the most potent emotional moments in the film.

So, Vox ran this headline last week that got made fun of quite a bit, it said Rogue One is the first Star Wars movie to realize it’s about war. I think that is an overstatement. You had Alderaan being demolished in the first Star Wars film, you had rebel pilots being shot down. And so I think that headline was overstated, and it kind of deserves the fun it got poked at it. But I think there’s a grain of truth to it as well, and it ties into what we’ve been talking about, some of the things that didn’t quite sit well with us about the film, like the blurring of the lines between black and white.

LS: The grey area.

Me: The grey areas. Also, I think the way the film was shot had a strong wartime feel. I’ve seen footage of the Iraq invasions and things like that, so making the one planet look like a Middle Eastern-type city, I think, was intentional.

LS: But I just had kind of a light-bulb go on here. Going back to the grey area, maybe the idea is that there are these character who have just been raised in a dark and “strongest survive” environment, and maybe that’s why they’ve been raised to think, “Hey you know what, if someone’s getting in your way, and you’re not gonna survive if you save them, kill them.” And I think that’s also maybe, maybe part of their point, like the sadness of war is that it changes people’s hearts to be kind of cruel, not like “This is who I am as a person,” but “I’ve been in this since I was a little kid, and this is how it’s done.”

Me: Yeah, but who trained him?

LS: I don’t know, whoever he was raised by. Maybe other Rebels who are sort of hardened…

Me: But that’s the point.

LS: What does it become that this person has grown up this way?

Me: The fact that he was clearly raised and trained by Rebels is still throwing the Rebels in this murky moral light.

LS: What are you teaching your children?

Me: Yeah, what kind of a rebellion trains its followers to be willing to murder their own informants? And yet, it’s like it kind of wants you to forget all that by the end, by the time they’re all jumping in and fighting together.

LS: And I did forget that actually, but coming back to it is important.

Me: Right, and there certainly are a lot of admirable characters, who… you know, we don’t see them do anything morally murky. I really liked, and this fits into the film feeling more like a war film, the scenes in the final battle reminded me very strongly of Pacific footage from WWII, with the beach and the landing ramps coming down and the soldiers running off. The way the soldiers were decked out looked like real soldiers’ gear, soldiers’ armor, and I loved that. I loved the way it made you feel like you were in the middle of an honest-to-goodness, boots-on-the-ground firefight.

LS: Yeah.

Me: But again, this is partly why I think the headline was silly, because in the original Star Wars movie, that space battle was partly based on dogfights from WWII.

LS: True.

Me: So you definitely have that feel carried over, I think. People have also said that it resembles a war film because all our heroes die.

LS: [mournfully] No, no…

Me: And it’s like they’re part of this doomed band of brothers, or this doomed platoon, and their purpose is to die carrying out their mission.

LS: And I think that maybe in a way… maybe not exactly, but maybe it redeems them a little bit for anything that they might have done.

Me: You might say that, yeah.

LS: Even though I kinda have realized now that some of them are like, “Okay, you’re not as great as I thought you were,” I’ve forgiven you by the time you’re dying to save others. I mean, y’know. “Love has…. man has no greater…” I’m sorry, I’m forgetting…

Me: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

LS: Right.

Me: Right. I do like that redemption that it gives them. And then one thing I wanted to mention is that I liked just the little, quick, even though it was quick, some attention given to the kind of nameless, faceless other soldiers that Cassian brings along. Even though we don’t get to know them by name, a couple of them have nice moments. So, you know, when they have to get to the master switch, the first guy who’s like…

LS: “I’ll do it.”

Me: “I’m going,” and then immediately dies.

LS: It’s like, you were willing to go out there! Awwwww!

Me: Aww, you were willing to! And you never learn that guy’s name, but he has a moment. And I really like that, because it does a great job showing just how many different, seemingly insignificant people gave up everything. And I feel like that’s very true to war.

LS: It is.

Me: If you think about how many soldiers in war…

LS: Just die. And maybe do something very brave, but guess what, they don’t get recognition.

Me: They just die quickly, and maybe they die trying to accomplish something that they can’t do in time, or they’re willing to do something brave, but they just die trying.

LS: They were willing to do it. That’s what matters.

Me: They were willing to do it, yeah, and that’s what matters. So there were many good ways in which this reminded me of a war film as well as the cons that we’ve talked about.

[pause, in which I search through my notes and say “Doop-de-do” and Little Sis points out that this makes the second time I’ve said “Doop-de-do” while leafing through my notes before taking matters into her own hands…]

LS: Can we talk about Jyssian for a minute?

Me: Can we talk about Jyssian? [giggling] Oh, of course! Yes, we can talk about Jyssian. What would you like to say about Jyssian?

LS: I ship them so hard.

Me: I know. Well, I feel like we didn’t get enough Jyssian.

LS: No, we didn’t! But from the moment they met, I was just like “Yep, yep.”

Me: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we had two meaningful glances, plus a hug.

LS: Maybe three if you count a really short one.

Me: Three meaningful looks and a hug.

LS: A hug. A HUG! I’m sorry.

Me: I’m sorry.

LS: I mean, I think I kind of understand a little bit where they’re coming from. They’re like, “Hmmmm, well, we don’t want to put anything too sexual in there.” They can kiss, I’m sorry. This is a PG-13 movie, we can get at least one cute kiss WHILE THEY’RE DY-ING!

Me: While they’re DY-ING for crying out loud. Come on.

LS: A hug. I mean, I’m sorry, that’s just so… you’re not even trying by that time.

Me: I know, and with such a beautiful music score for that moment, I thought, too. I mean, you’ve got everything else coming together at that moment. You’ve got this gorgeous shot, I think, the cinematography…

LS: Of death, by the way.

Me: Of death, the water, this nuclear blast coming across the water, beautifully shot, incredibly emotional music in the background, one of Giacchino’s best scoring moments in the film. And… they hug each other. Come on. I was robbed. I was so robbed.

LS: Just give some of those proud fangirls, like, okay, okay, like me, *clears throat*, out in the audience, something to “Squee” about for a few months. Give us a smooch, peo-ple.

Me: Please, please. Something. And, I mean, maybe the idea is supposed to be, “Well we didn’t want them to die as… a couple, we want them to die as friends.”

LS: How about friends who are, uh, one step up from friends, who are maybe realizing, “Hey, this is the last chance I’m ever gonna have to kiss you, ‘cuz guess what, we’re dying.”

Me: Oh, and by the way, a sharp-eyed reviewer caught some sloppy editing in that moment.

LS: You caught it too.

Me: Well no, the only reason I noticed it was because I was watching for it after this reviewer mentioned it. But it’s that in that moment…

LS: He looks over her shoulder!

Me: His eyes flick up and over her shoulder, and there is literally nothing there for him to be looking at.

LS: Like you said, the director probably yelled “Cut!”

Me: Probably the moment when the director yelled “Cut.”

LS: No! You’re supposed to be standing over her in some protective…way, I don’t know.

Me: Or having your eyes closed, or something, anything but looking like you’re glancing at the director. And so, yeah, I think that’s an example of something that wasn’t cleaned up in the hastiness of the rush to re-shoot stuff. The ending, among other things, had to be re-shot, so maybe that was one of those scenes. But man, sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Sloppy cutting.

Finally, I think we’ll make this the last question, but it’s been debated whether we needed Rogue One or not. And it certainly ties up some loose ends for A New Hope, but we could argue it creates some too. So, what’s your verdict? Did we need Rogue One?

LS: I mean, technically, they could have said “All right, you know what, we had the originals, we had the prequels,” which, by the way, do not exist. But we got that, and we loved it. I think that it’s also not fair to us Star Wars fans, if they hadn’t made this, we’d have had to wait until next Christmas, NEXT CHRISTMAS for Episode VIII! They’re trying to fill in the gap, they’re trying to keep us interested. And you know, they’re trying to be like, “Hey, come on, we’re gonna give you some more. Now, don’t you want to give us some more money for Episode VIII?” (I will, by the way. I will.) But, you know…

Me: Yeah, and I feel like this was a story that deserved to be told, for sure.

LS: Yeah, and I think it’s about that, because it’s a war movie, it’s about giving recognition to those people who died. I realize these are fictional characters, but you know, just giving that little piece of, like “These people died to get the plans for the Death Star,” and I think that we hadn’t really discussed that before. I mean of course, what’s-her-name was like, “Many Bothans died to bring us this information,” but it’s like, “Okay, one sentence!” That’s their epitaph.

Me: Yeah, exactly. Now, of course, that’s for the Return of the Jedi thing. But right, this really, it makes the sacrifice concrete. And it’s an exciting story. It’s a really good, good story. I’m just surprised that it wasn’t done any sooner. So, yeah, I think I agree with you. Did we need Rogue One? No, of course we didn’t need Rogue One, just like we didn’t need Force Awakens. But I sure am glad…

LS: I mean technically, and I know Star Wars fans are not gonna be happy, but George Lucas didn’t NEED to come up with the idea for Star Wars. I mean, we would have lived our lives…

Me: *gasp!*

LS: …But there would have been an aching hole in our hearts that is now filled.

Me: A Star Wars-shaped hole in our hearts.

LS: An X-Wing-shaped hole.

Me: An X-Wing-shaped hole! [laughing] Oh I love that, that’s a good line. So yeah, I don’t think I need to argue that Rogue One was necessary in order to say that it’s a bloody good show, old chap.

LS: But the way they handled it, it was a hopeful war movie. And that’s the point. It’s like they died, but guess what, because of them other people lived. And they lived free. I mean, that’s the point, they died for the rebellion. That’s what they did. That’s great.

Me: Yeah. Now, oh yeah, we didn’t really talk about the CGI Leia at the end.

LS: Uggggh. That was terrible.

Me: I feel like that wasn’t really necessary.

LS: It’s funny, I didn’t even notice, specifically, the CGI Tarkin. I mean, I was just sort of like, “Okay…” I didn’t even know the actor was dead, by the way. But the CGI Leia, I saw it right away. Her face isn’t even the same shape! Did you notice? Her face was longer, and I’m like, “No, no! That’s not… that’s not Carrie Fisher!”

Me: Yeah, I know, a human face is really, really hard. I think that scene would have been just as powerful if you’d just shot her from behind.

LS: And she could say the cool line, from behind.

Me: She could even say the cool line!

LS: She could be, like, looking out the window or something.

Me: Do another reflection. The reflections were cool. I liked what they were doing with Grand Moff Tarkin’s reflection earlier. Just do that for Leia.

LS: Well, just make sure the reflection isn’t terrible.

Me: Well okay, yeah that’s true, they would still have to do something like that, but it wouldn’t be as overt.

LS: Maybe you could kind of… show a little bit more of her buns. Like she could kind of look up from the card, and we could like, see some hair, I don’t know, but she could kind of look up and be like, “They sent us hope,” or something, and that would have worked great actually.

Me: Yeah, I agree.

So, I think the final verdict is Rogue One: Not needed but…

LS: Appreciated.

Me: Not needed but appreciated. We’re glad to have it.

LS: Oh, and we didn’t take a selfie in front of the really big display.

Me: That’s okay. We didn’t need to take a selfie.

[Here I showed her still shots from a “first look” at the “sequel,” aka A New Hope, and she totally bought it for a few moments.]

Okay, well thanks so much for going to see this in the theater with me… We’ll certainly be doing this for Episode VIII.

Well em gee… December sure flew by! As a reminder, for blog-only subscribers, you can follow me on Facebook (and now, on Twitter!) to keep up with my various writings. Despite appearances, I haven’t been wholly inactive this month. You can read my two latest articles for The Stream from my author’s page here. Both of them tie film together with life issues such as abortion and assisted suicide.

Today, we’re back with something lighter: another blockbuster deep dive in two parts with Little Sister, thus expanding the series which I’ve chosen to christen “Two Sisters Review.” WARNING: Thar be SPOILERS! Proceed at your own risk.

Today, we cover stand-out new characters, likes and dislikes about character arcs, plot holes, and how we feel about the shades of grey it introduces into Star Wars morality. Tomorrow, we’ll cover Darth Vader (force-chokes! bad puns!), the new villain, more plot holes, Rogue One As War Movie, CGI… characters, and oh yes, shipping. Read on, and stay tuned!

Me: All right, we just got back from Rogue One! This was my second time seeing the film, your first time. First impressions, what do you think?

Little Sister: Darker. Sadder. But really, really well done.

Me: So, do you think it lives up to the hype?

LS: You know, I haven’t really been looking at a lot of hype, but I’m sure if I know anything about hype these days, I’m pretty sure it did.

Me: Did it deliver what you wanted out of it?

LS: I think I wanted to see something that wasn’t just a ripoff of some other movie, and I didn’t necessarily mind that, it didn’t really bother me with The Force Awakens, where everyone was saying “Oh, it’s a remake of A New Hope.” But I did want to see something different, and I got it.

Me: Yeah, I think you felt that from the opening moment. The way it just puts you in there with no crawl, no fanfare, it’s just like bam.

LS: Very nice, yes.

Me: We’ll talk a little bit about the music. It was composed by Michael Giacchino, not John Williams. If I hadn’t told you that, would you have thought it was still John Williams?

LS: I thought it was John Williams! I was sitting there like, “Oh wow, this is really good, it’s a new theme!… Oh, that wasn’t him.”

Me: It was a pretty good imitation of the real deal, I think.

Okay, stand-out new character?

LS: Ummmmm, K2-SO.

Me: I think that’s who I would settle on as well.

LS: Maybe Cassian too, ‘cuz he’s pretty cool.

Me: Cassian is pretty cool, but I gotta go with K2 as well, even though he’s not a human.

LS: Of course! Doesn’t really matter.

Me: He felt a little better developed than a couple of the human characters, funnily enough.

LS: [giggling] Yeah, he did actually.

Me: Man, oh man, he had just some of the greatest lines.

LS: And I liked the way they worked humor into this movie, because it’s so sad. They did a very nice job of balancing it out. They didn’t shove it in at the wrong moments, but they didn’t hold back on it either. They kind of tried to put it in just the right places, and I think they succeeded.

Me: Right I agree. They knew that you needed something to lighten it up, because…

LS: Otherwise, it was gonna be like, “We’re not taking our kids to this movie!”

Me: It would be a pretty depressing slog, otherwise. Some of the funniest lines came from Chirrut, the blind guy, who was pretty epic too.

LS: He was. He was cool.

Me: He and K2 are kind of vying for stand-out character. I think maybe my favorite Chirrut line is when Saw Guerrera’s guys are taking him away, and they put the bag over his head, and he’s like, “Are you kidding me?? I’m blind!” That was awesome.

LS: I know. [giggling]

Me: Perfect line. Perfect delivery. So great.

Okay, what was your favorite K2-SO snark?

LS: “You know what the chances are of her using that against you?…They’re high.”

Me: “It’s high.”

LS: “Very high.”

Me: “It’s very high.” That was a great one. I liked the one where they’re coming in for a landing, and he’s like “There is a 25% chance of failure… Well, now, there’s a 35% chance of failure…” (“I don’t want to know, thank you!”) Maybe one of my favorites is when they first touch down and Cassian goes, “We’ll need a map.” “Well, I’m sure there’s one just lying about.”

LS: I know. My thoughts exactly, basically. [laughing]

Me: You know, when I first saw the promos for K2-SO, I wasn’t sure what direction they were going to take him, and I thought maybe he was just gonna be C3-PO redux.

LS: Another droid.

Me: Right, but he’s not. He’s very different from C3-PO. He’s got his own personality.

LS: Flare.

Me: For sure. C3-PO was never, he didn’t have that dry snark. He was always just…

Me: …flailing droid. “Ohhhhh, I’m melting! Oh, I’ve forgotten how much I detest space travel.” But K2 has a snark for everything. And also, he’s a fighter. C3-PO wasn’t a fighter, but K2…

LS: Good shot.

Me: I know. Man, epic last stand, even though he was a droid…

LS: You don’t think about the fact that they’re just droids, because they don’t seem like that.

Me: Yeah, I think it’s like when a loyal dog dies.

LS: Yeah, except more, because they can talk.

Me: True, that’s true. But okay, if we think about this from the theologically correct perspective, a droid doesn’t have a soul, and neither does a dog.

LS: But it’s just… it seems like they do, I don’t know how to put it!

Me: I know, it’s tempting.

LS: I mean, it doesn’t seem like everything is just programmed in for them to say it.

Me: I know, it’s very, very tempting.

Oh man, we’ll have plenty more to say about the ending. Let’s talk a little bit about the look of the film, the feel of it. How do you think it measured up for you as a die-hard fan of the first Star Wars? How did it make the universe feel period-correct for that time?

LS: You know, I think I’m a little more open to newer things, because, I don’t know, I guess…

Me: Maybe you’re not as die-hard as all that?

LS: You know, I wouldn’t say that. I am a really big fan of the originals. But I think I’m not quite as “It has to be perfect, and I’ve memorized absolutely everything.”

Me: Like me.

LS: Yes, yes, like you. “Hmmmm, I gotta get my magnifying glass here, oh it looks like it’s not exactly like the original!” But I do think, having said all that, I do think that they did do a good job of maybe taking some better technology, obviously, that we have now, but still giving it that sort of “New Hopey” feel.

Me: Yeah, there were just so many different little things. The binoculars that they use are exactly like Luke’s binoculars. There are Easter eggs scattered around, of course, some of which you might or might not catch. I caught all of them.

LS: Oh, of course you did, yes.

Me: I just loved the attention to detail with the weapons, the technology, the clothing. It had that same slightly dirtier, lived-in feel that the first Star Wars had. That kind of gritty feel, even though it is a fairytale and a space opera, it feels very grounded.

LS: I never think about it that way, even though it is technically correct, I never think about it as a fairy-tale.

Me: I mean, certainly, the original Star Wars has elements of fairy-tale in it. For example, Obi-Wan Kenobi, very similar to Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. And the whole mythos of the Jedi and the lore of the lightsabers and stuff…you’ve got the hero, the princess, the villain, the princess is rescued, and all that stuff.

But yeah, I think they did a fantastic job of maintaining that period continuity there.

So, to talk a little bit about some cons of the movie, it did undergo several re-shoots, and maybe as a result of that it felt somewhat choppy, slapped together in places, particularly in the beginning.

LS: I liked the first half though. I don’t think it was badly done. I didn’t actually know they’d tried to do a whole bunch of re-shoots, so I would have thought it was fine.

Me: Well, it seemed to me like they were introducing everybody in kind of a choppy way…

LS: “We will say their name once. You shall know it for the rest of the movie, right? Right.”

Me: Exactly. I could not keep track of everyone’s names the first time.

LS: Well, what was the name of Chirrut’s sidekick guy? What was it?

Me: See, I’m STILL not sure what his name was. I feel like it was said somewhere…

LS: That guy.

Me: That guy. If it was, I missed it. “The guy with the giant gun who’s, who, uh…”

LS: Dies tragically.

Me: Well, they all die tragically, but we’ll get there. But yeah, I feel like the actors rose above the characters a little bit, because I was left wanting to know more about them. And if you think about it, we really got little to no backstory on any of them, except for Jyn Erso.

LS: Yeah. Very true. Basically it was just like, “Ohhhh, oh, oh they had a dark past.” I was feeling like K2 says, “That’s a vague…”

Me: I find that… backstory vague and unconvincing.

LS: Yes! [giggling]

Me: Oh man, another great line.

LS: I’m using that! I’m stealing that line. I am so stealing that line.

Me: Totally. “I find that answer vague and unconvincing,” this is going to become my motto now.

LS: Mine too, so we can share the motto.

Me: #vagueandunconvincing

LS: Hahahaha!

Me: Okay, let’s focus some more on Jyn and on Captain Cassian. That prologue was really fantastic, I think.

LS: With her as a kid.

Me: Yeah, I think it was one of the best openings to a Star Wars movie that I’ve ever seen.

LS: Yeah, it just slams you, and you’re like, “Yep, her mom’s gonna die, and then she’s gonna have to run off as a little kid.” I liked the way they did that kid actor. She looked very kind of ragged.

Me: She looked a lot like Felicity Jones. They really found someone who looked like her, and a good little actress.

LS: Yeah, and the hair, with the strands in front.

Me: I know, I know, with the pigtails!

LS: I like that hairstyle, by the way. She keeps it pretty immaculate throughout.

Me: Well it’s a little messy, it’s kind of coming out by the end.

LS: It’s kind of like it’s supposed to look messy anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Oh, and do you ever notice… okay, let me just go on a little rant, this bothers me in movies: when characters have been, y’know, awake for some crazy number of days and slogging through all conditions and blah-blah-blah, all of a sudden they will look CLEANER than they did before, and it’s, like, obvious they didn’t slop enough fake dirt on the actors. “Oh, now you look a lot better than you did, and you should look worse!”

Me: Yeah, I know what you mean.

LS: I mean, I almost like it, because I don’t really want to be looking at a bunch of dirty, sweaty, whatever, but it’s just like c’mon, they were dirtier than that five minutes ago! What, is there a shower on board the ship?

Me: I seriously doubt that. Somehow I doubt that.

I still felt like Jyn didn’t have a whole lot of personality, even though she did have some backstory.

LS: Yeah, I think I definitely prefer Rey as a character, because this is how I think of it: you can see what Rey is thinking more often. It’s in her eyes. Felicity Jones is a great actor, and I think she did a good job, but with this character… you get this feeling of, “I’m just broken. I’ve been through a lot, and I’m just like, I don’t care any more, basically. [Or] I care but I’m not gonna show you as much.” And Rey, she’s got more of a core of steel to her, and you can feel that. She’s younger, but she’s stronger.

Me: Yeah, there are more layers to her as a character, as you say. And with Jyn, you feel like all the emotion, or a lot of it, has been kind of beaten out of her by life. Now, she does have a couple really vulnerable moments in the film. For example, when she sees the hologram of her father, and she really breaks down, that was a good moment.

LS: It was, absolutely, but I feel like we could have had more leading up to that, rather than just, “Yep, yep, this is me, blank face, there’s nothing here.”

Me: “This is me blank-faced and all of a sudden I’m crying.” Yeah. Her character arc sort of lurched from one moment to the next.

Now, Saw Guerrera was kind of an oddity in this movie… the way he was handled felt a little odd and kind of forced. For example, I didn’t understand how he turned on a dime, just in the conversation with Jyn, where he’s all paranoid, and he’s saying, “Did they send you to kill me?” and everything could be a trap, and I’m not believing anyone, and I don’t know who to trust…

LS: Just calm down. Calm down. You’ve known this kid for a long time, come on.

Me: Yeah, but then all of a sudden he’s like, “Oh, here, come I have something to show you.”

LS: You don’t do that. Basic Rules of Being Paranoid: You don’t suddenly trust the person.

Me: I know, and then he’s sending them away like, “Save the rebellion! Save the dream!”

LS: I know. Blah, blah.

Me: He must have gotten convinced pretty quickly, I guess.

LS: Because he watched the hologram, maybe?

Me: But no, he’d already seen the hologram, remember? He says “This is the message that your father sent.”

LS: Hmmmm.

Me: And another thing too, okay, while we’re talking about plot holes: This pilot was sent with this message.

LS: (He gets a little annoying.)

Me: But I’m trying to figure out how much he knows. It seems like he didn’t know what was in the message when he brought it.

LS: Yeah, I guess they’re trying to show us that he can be trusted, basically, that he didn’t look at this.

Me: I suppose it’s also possible that Galen didn’t want him to know too much, because he didn’t want him to have anything to say if he got captured.

LS: That’s true. He had plenty of babbling to do when he got captured. That was quite annoying.

Me: Oh, of course. That was a little annoying.

LS: Very annoying.

Me: But the other thing too is that the whole plan, Cassian’s mission, is to assassinate Erso, but he ends up not. And so it’s like, Jyn is trying to tell them about this hologram message that she got, before she knows that they’re planning to assassinate him…

LS: But then she’s like, “Oh, you were sent to assassinate him!” And I almost understand that, but I also think that she should have realized what he tells her, like “Well, guess what? I didn’t, in case you hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t me.”

Me: I liked that scene, though. I thought that was very believable.

LS: It was handled very well.

Me: But what I didn’t get was how come they didn’t have the pilot vouch for Galen’s sincerity? Because the pilot pretty clearly knew, even if he didn’t know the specifics of what was in the message, he knew that Galen had sent him in good faith, to try to reach out to the rebellion. Now, I guess they still could have been like, “Well, but maybe Galen was lying to the pilot.”

LS: This pilot seems pretty gullible, so…

Me: Yeah, the pilot could just be a useful idiot, he could just have been a tool in this whole thing. So, even if the pilot was there vouching for Galen’s character, they might not have been willing to accept him. But the fact that they didn’t even show the pilot really talking at all or speaking up at the council, when it seems like he would be one of the people in the best position to know, seemed a little odd to me. His whole character seemed underused, in my opinion. Because there’s all this importance attached to him, right? It’s like, “The pilot, the pilot, the pilot this, the pilot that, we’ve just received word that a pilot…” It seems like there’s much more talking about him than him actually talking for himself, you know what I mean?

LS: I think maybe the idea is that he’s just, as a person, he’s really not the kind of person who steps up and says, “Yep, I’m important and here’s why.” Basically, he’s the person who’s like, “Uhhhhh, ummmmmm, uh, yeah, yeah, right! [babble babble] [annoying stuff]”

Me: Yeah, but I really wanted to know more about his connection with Galen, because he’s got a couple of lines that sort of imply Galen had a really big impact on him. But again, we never see that, we don’t have any understanding of that. So I think that character is an example of what could have been and how I was sort of left wanting.

Now, let’s talk about Cassian’s arc somewhat…

LS: He’s kind of cranky. That’s how I thought of him at the beginning. He’s just very like, “Yeah, whatever. Yep, yep, yep. Do this, do that. Be really grumpy.”

Me: Now, did you catch what happened in the very first scene with him? Because his informant comes and tells him about the pilot, the message and everything. And the guy’s got this broken arm, and they’re kind of trapped down in this… I wasn’t quite sure, but they were in a city…

LS: Oh, he grabs the guy’s arm, right?

Me: Well, no, it’s more than that. The Stormtroopers are milling around, and they kill a couple of them and more are coming, and the guy’s going, “Oh, I’ll never be able to get out of here with my arm!” And so then Cassian just shoots him, he just kills him.

LS: HE was the one who… ohhhh!

Me: That was Cassian!

LS: I wondered for a minute there. He’s like, “Oh, you’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be fine.” I didn’t like the look on his face. I was like, “Did… what… did he just do what I think he did…??”

Me: I know. The very first time, I saw it, it went by so quickly…

LS: I know. I thought someone else shot him at first.

Me: It almost seemed like that, like someone else shoots him, but no, it’s Cassian.

LS: He’s got this kind of … nasty look.

Me: Yeah, he looks like he’s not up to any good. So right, he just coldly shoots the guy, because he knows the guy won’t be able to climb. So he shoots him and leaves him, and escapes himself.

LS: It’s like, excuse me? Are you good or are you bad? Or are you just… you’re ruthless! Come on! And I think that if that did happen, he sort of gets a little bit less nasty as it goes on, he becomes a little more like, “Okay, I can’t just be selfish all that time.”

Me: But I think that action right there, and also his entire mission to assassinate Galen, it really puts a different spin on the Rebel Alliance that I’m not sure I’m really comfortable with as a Star Wars fan.

Me: I want to read something to you that was written by Steven Greydanus, one of my favorite film critics. This particularly bothered him. He wrote, “In all previous Star Wars movies, one side wore black hats and the other white; it was always clear, not only which were the bad guys, but also which were the good guys.”

LS: Well technically, the Stormtroopers were dressed in white, but whatever. Continue.

Me: Ha! Good point, fair point. “In Rogue One, that’s not the case. For some, this is a selling-point. For me, it’s close to a deal-breaker.” What do you think?

LS: Well, I didn’t notice quite as much of that. I was just like, “Ooooh, this is cool!” I didn’t quite notice the little moments of cruelty, but now that I think about it, yeah, I’m not sure I like that very much.

Me: The closest that Cassian comes to (sort of) acknowledging his past is…

LS: “We’ve all done terrible things, but everything I did, I did for the rebellion.”

Me: Although, I guess he could say, “Well, I was the only one who had the information, I had to escape and take it back, otherwise we both would be killed…”

LS: Yeah, let’s talk ethics here.

Me: Uh, yeah. I know. So really, in a way, it’s never really acknowledged…I dislike the deliberate muddying of the waters for our characters. I’m writing something about this, but I think this is of a piece with other Hollywood things. So, if you remember, the character of Faramir in the books Lord of the Rings is one of the purest good guys. He says he would never even be tempted by the ring. He’s good from the beginning. Now, in the movies, which I’ve seen but you haven’t, he initially captures the hobbits, and he’s not that good at first. He’s even tempted by the ring. So I feel like there’s this compulsive need in contemporary Hollywood to muddy its characters…

LS: Yeah, we’re all bad and dark anyway, we’re all fallen, so hey, let’s just go out of our way to show that to everyone!

Me: We can’t just have a character who’s just straightforwardly good, that’s not interesting anymore. We have to make him dark and complex and blah-blah-blah.

LS: I actually think it’s very interesting when someone is straightforward and good, because that’s so rare in the world around us. It’s an escape, people, okay?

Me: I think it shows a lack of imagination. I mean, I find Obi-Wan Kenobi a much more compelling character than Cassian, even though Obi-Wan Kenobi is consistently good.

LS: Yeah. And, Cassian’s cute, so y’know, whatever.

Me: What does that have to do with anything?

LS: I think there’s this notion that hey, you can get away with stuff with the audience a little more if you’re good-looking.

Me: Oh, I hadn’t thought about that… So yeah, this definitely bugs me the more I think about it. And as Greydanus put it, it’s not really my Star Wars anymore, you know? It’s not really the universe that Lucas initially had in mind.